


Bury the Faultlines

by lionsenpai, Zerrat



Series: Prisoner AU [2]
Category: Drag-On Dragoon | Drakengard, Drakengard 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Slow Burn, prisoner au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-21 09:48:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3687666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsenpai/pseuds/lionsenpai, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zerrat/pseuds/Zerrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Zero's assault on Cathedral City leaves her in One's hands, the Intoners' long-sought peace seems just within reach. But as she prepares to put Zero to trial for her crimes, shadows of the past and present both close in on Cathedral City and One is left to navigate the secrets surrounding them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So after a couple of months of working on this story, Zerrat and I are finally posting the first chapter of our collab! It's been a long few months of roleplaying the story out and then converting it all to one perspective, adding additional scenes, and making general edits, but we've finally got something to show for it. Hope you enjoy!

The keep smelled of fire and decay.

Smoke curled along the stones, thickening the air, and even with the great bastion doors thrown open, the miasma lingered, sinking down the stairs to fill the library. The pages of texts older than Cathedral City curled at the touch of it, and though the soldiers had arrived half an hour past, dozens of volumes remained on the low shelves, drinking in the festering air. These too were tallied among the casualties of Zero’s attack, knowledge and three regiments of men falling in one woman’s mad grasp for power.

The men and women who’d been evacuated returned in scores now, flitting through the library with medical supplies and ancient tomes. Those who were not dedicated to saving what they could of One’s library bent by her sisters, touching their wounds with gauze and tape and offering quiet thanks as they worked.

One had needed little care, her injuries restricted to a single, shallow cut along her neck, a token from her older sister from where she’d tried to behead her after Michael’s death. The medics fussed and dressed her with gauze anyway, their hands reverent, voices low as they asked if there was anything else she needed. She dismissed them with a shake of her head and a word of thanks, telling them to find her foremost lieutenant, a woman by the name of Turric, and receive all further orders from her.

There were more casualties than just this, and even the worst among her sisters could not compare to the savage amputations and terrible burns suffered by the men of her army. The pieces of them would have to be scrapped from the lower bailey after those still living had been moved.

Here within the library, however, only Four truly suffered, her song jumping as she turned her face from the man stitching up what he could of her wound, pulling together the tendons and flesh with as much care as possible. A downward slash had nearly taken her leg off at the knee, and now One worried for her ability to walk.

This encounter taught her dragons and the weapons created from their bodies left injuries which did not heal, lingering like a pestilence until enough time had passed. It was human nearly, the way they suffered. When the warlords had showered them with arrows and the pressed them with swords and axes, their wounds had knitted together with only a tremble of song, but now it seemed even Intoners had weaknesses. The cut on her own throat, a burning, ever-constant pain she'd half forgotten, was testament to that.

Moving to Four’s side, One kneeled quietly, taking Four’s hand in her own. “He’s almost finished, Four.” She let her song play calm and comforting in time with Four’s, and Four clutched at her hands, trembling and on the cusp of pressing her face into One’s neck. “I’m here, sister.”

Forehead sticky with sweat, Four buried her whimpers into One’s shoulder, and One set her hand at the back of her neck, whispering kind things to her as the medic closed the wound and tied off the stitches.   
  
Voice tight with shame and pain both, Four managed, "I don't understand—” A clipped sob, quickly stifled into One’s woolens as the medic pulled her stitches tight. "Why would she do this?"

One set her hand to the back of Four’s neck, frowning. Never before had she been so powerless to stop her sister’s suffering. Their pain was brief, the muted sensation of ripping flesh or broken bones before the song could heal them. Even injuries from one another mended within moments, but Zero had changed all of that with her dragonbone blade.

“I suspect she has no motive save greed, Four—and selfishness.”  
  
The medic wiped down the wound with a rag, cleaning away the blood, and then pulled a roll of gauze from his bag. Four shuddered. "Y-yes, I see that now. "   
  
With nothing left but to wrap the wound, Four’s grip on One loosened, her breathing and song evening, and she pulled back somewhat, her face warm, eyes not quite meeting One’s. She fidgeted at One’s fingers at the nape of her neck, and as the medic worked at her knee, Four turned her attention on strip of gauze half concealed by One’s collar.  
  
"She hurt you too," Four said, looking up to trace the edge of the bandages on One's neck, her fingers light and reverent.

One’s mouth tightened into a frown, words dying in her throat to look down upon her sister, riddled with tape and bandages, who still spoke first of One’s injuries.

“I would not have you worry about me.” In the battle, it had been Four’s cry of pain that had pulled One into the fray, that had pushed One to summon Gabriel. She should not have waited, subjecting her sisters to _this_. “I am sorry… I should have intervened sooner.”

"Don't apologise for her." Four's voice was tight, but for once, it was level and sure, her gaze set.

Something shifted in her expression, lips pulling into a grimace. Her song spiked, the notes sharpening, and Four finally met One’s eyes, intense and serious. "We should kill her now. Before she escapes and hurts more people."

One gave a sharp exhale.

“Four…” she began, her eyes flickering away from her sister.

Men and women still moved throughout the library, but at the door, One noticed a familiar face: square and worn with scars from the war. Turric, who had been with her since the very beginnings of the rebellion, met her gaze with a slight nod, and something like relief bubbled up in her chest.

If Turric was here, there were things which required her elsewhere.

Turning back to Four, she said, “You know I cannot. Don’t worry yourself with Zero, sister. You deserve time to rest and recover now. I’ll have someone help you to the overlook—” She glanced at Turric once more, hesitating. “—and I will check in on you as soon as I’m able.”

She bent and pressed a kiss to her sister’s forehead, trying not to notice the snarls of her song, the way they nearly resembled Zero’s.

Four’s mouth fell open, brow bunched, but her words caught in her throat as One rose. She would see to Four later, offer her company when she would be tempted to fixate on the pain—and Zero—but for now there was still work to be done. Stopping three retainers with scrolls headed for the door, One bid them return to help move Four to more comfortable quarters once they had secured the scrolls. Then she moved to meet Turric.

She saluted One as she stepped from the library and said, “My lady. The extraction effort has finished.”

One nodded to her salute and motioned toward the stairs. “Have the bones moved to the vault in the eastern ramparts. We need someone trustworthy at the head of this, lieutenant. I don’t want a fingerbone outside my custody.”

They took the stairs together, and Turric said, “I’ll appoint my best sergeant to oversee the operation, my lady.”

At the top of the stairs, the plaza opened before them, tiles smoldering and broken from the clash. People flitted between cracked pillars, collecting the remnants of their battle and erasing the proof that Zero had been there at all. One had allowed her to cast shadows over their reign for too long; no longer would she mar what they had created, the peace they had made.

Turric caught her staring and cleared her throat. “The damage was severe. It will be weeks before everything’s repaired, my lady.”

“I am content that there were not more casualties in subduing my sister. Let the medics know that we are adequately outfitted here to deal with the remaining injuries. Their efforts should be focused on those caught in Zero’s rampage.”

“Of course.” Turric saluted again, her gaze steady, shoulders broad. “By your leave.”

She hesitated. “The sword my sister carried. Have it brought to me please.”

“I’ll see to it myself.”

One dismissed her, and she turned on her heel and trotted down the stairs, taking quick, long strides across the plaza and only pausing to shout orders at a soldier who was handling the limp, forgotten arm left from the battle.

Grimacing, she made a note to order Turric to have it burned with the dead.

She might have had Gabriel dispose of it had she not already ordered him back to his tower beyond the walls of her bastion, the magic which bound them prickling the hair at the back of her neck at just the thought of him. She could touch his mind with a thought, reach out and feel the beat of his heart with less, but with Zero defeated, there was little need. Without Zero, Gabriel was a weapon without purpose.

“Why so tense, sister? We won, remember?” Five’s voice was warm and airy behind her, the notes of her song drifting along One’s skin.

Her sister smiled brilliantly as ever, yet she favored her left side, limping slightly as she took the last step to stand of height with One. The smooth flesh of her thigh was covered with bandage and gauze, and One knew that beneath, a wound festered and bled, mortal like none of them had ever experienced.

“I am merely concerned,” One said, reaching out to touch her sister’s arm where Zero had caught her with blade. “How are you feeling?”

“Our eldest sister sits chained beneath our very feet,” Five purred, advancing until they were flush against one another, the heat from her sinking in even through One’s thick woolens. She touched the gauze taped to the side of One's neck, her fingertips lingering on the expanse of it for a moment before sliding back into her hair. “I tremble to contain myself, yet you look no less serious than when she began her assault. I had hoped you’d allow yourself to celebrate.”

“There is still Zero’s dragon,” One said, leaning into the touch despite herself.

Five’s lips quirked, a shuddering thrill running through her song at the mere mention. When she spoke, her voice carried a rasp of delight, and her eyes burned forge hot. “His bones will make a beautiful cage for our dear sister.”

“His wish is what I worry for.”

Gabriella had told her that a dragon’s dying wish held great power. One had held the bladed lance to the gap in her scales where her heart could be reached, and Gabriella had promised it would be enough to defeat even Michael, strongest of all dragons. She’d pushed the blade through, and Gabriel had been born in a flurry of blood and light.

She let out a shuddering breath, and Five frowned at her. Pulling away, she offered, “Forgive me. Perhaps after Zero has been dealt with.”

"Yes, of course. And tell me, One," Five said, her lips curving into a smile. "What plans do you have for our wayward sister?"

One looked to Five, tilting her chin. "You know very well, Five."

Five clicked her tongue, shrugging. " _Justice_ , as you’ve said." The word was juvenile on her tongue, shaped into the stuff of childish fancy. Her teeth were white, her smile prodding. “I’ve heard you had ironworkers prepare something special.”

One sighed. Her sister’s wit played rival to her own, and on most occasions, she enjoyed their games. “Chains, and nothing more.”

“Of dragonbone? I might fancy such a thing, myself. Perhaps you may might a gift of them to me—once you have had your fill of Zero, of course.”

Five's implications were not lost on One, but acknowledging them was no better than feeding them. Instead, One asked her sister mildly, "Would you have me include her in the package?"

Five hummed, assessing, but a shiver of desire ran through her song, heady and thick in her blood. It moved across One’s skin like a caress. "Would you trust me with her? I do know how you fixate so."

Pressing her lips to a line, One replied, "I have always done what is needed."

It had become a mantra of late, something to tell herself when sleep evaded her, dodging her in wisps of violet and gold. She could chase Gabriella’s ghost to the ends of the world and never gain from it, yet her sacrifice had given her something just as precious. One looked upon Five and breathed deep of her, knowing that nothing could take them from her now.

"And you well know there is nothing I wouldn’t trust you with. It’s her I fear," One admitted, the words coming reluctantly.

"I might assuage that, if you would let me take her from your hands, dear sister."

One touched the curve of Five’s lower back, rubbing small circles into the soft flesh just above her hips. "You will not have Zero."

The response in Five was immediate, her eyes slits, the line of tension that made her cut of angles. She looked away and bared her teeth, swallowing a noise of derision, yet One did not flinch, continuing to draw circles over her spine. Five’s expression only gave slowly, like a bank giving to the persistence of a river, but inevitably, it did. When she finally turned back to One, affection touched her eyes, a warm flame amidst the unhappiness.

Desire was white hot in her, untouchable and untempered, yet it burned bright and swallowed the object of her attentions whole. Love lasted where the obsession died and was born again. At times, it would smother the blooming flame—a testament to their bond.

“Perhaps you would honor me with a muzzle then,” she said, leaning in and enveloping her in heat and the scent of sweat and summer. Her arms trembled when they slid around One’s shoulders, the strain of her song humming through her voice as she released Zero and embraced One instead—for the moment. “Four would wear it splendidly.”

One squeezed her, adjusting her song until it soothed, until it met Five’s and enveloped the knots of lingering desire with cool relief. “I will consider it.”

“You lie poorly, sister,” Five said, her shoulders sagging after a moment.

“You are right, of course.” One released her, looking upon her face with a faint smile.

It was returned weakly, and Five said, “Of course.”

It was only the scrape of leather on stone which tore One’s gaze from Five, the careful slant of her lips, the endearment on the tip of her tongue. Turric waited at the base of the stairs, heels together, a length of cloth covering the line of a sword. Her eyes sought the stone, looking anywhere but the two of them, yet when she felt One’s gaze upon her, she approached, taking the steps slowly for fear of interrupting.

Prudent and meticulous, she never failed to impress.

The stutter in her song was what finally drew her attention to the thing wrapped in tan linen beneath her arm, and from the way Five exhaled sharply beside her, she felt it too. Turric glanced between the two of them and offered a reverent nod, procuring the thing in both hands and holding it before her like an offering.

“As requested,” she said.

One hesitated only a moment in the taking of it. Beneath the cloth, it was heavy and solid, swallowing notes of One’s song like a living thing. There was no music to it, just the pervasive void. She shuddered to touch it and wondered how Zero had managed to wield it so skillfully.

Finally, she said, “Thank you, lieutenant.”

Turric saluted, and One sent her away with a mention of the arm and her trust to continue to oversee things. Not once had Turric failed her, and what came next would require every ounce of her focus.

When she had gone, Five’s stare was weighty between her shoulder blades, a question without words.

“A precaution,” One explained.

“One,” Five managed, tight-lipped. “What do you plan to do?”

So long as Zero drew breath, she would inspire only obsession. Five may have felt it most keenly, but One knew her other sisters were not immune either. She’d seen the way Four’s gaze had lingered even after Zero had been brought to heel, the sincerity with which Two had thanked One for not killing her outright. She was a blight upon them all, and One would not test what dark desires Zero’s presence would fuel.

“I will subject no one to Zero. While she awaits her due, the keep will be closed to all but those necessary deliveries.”

“And the sword?”

“A precaution,” she repeated.

“It almost seems a death sentence from where I’m standing, sister.”

“She needs to be treated, and I would not risk our medics. She may be weakened, but she is still an Intoner,” One explained. “She will be judged, sister, not butchered in a cell. Three and I will see to her.”

Five exhaled, and One touched her arm, their songs synchronizing. Her lips twisted into a smile, none of it touching her eyes. “You intend to take Three? Experiments hardly seem your domain.”

“I should hope you know me better than that, Five.”

Five turned away, pulling from One. “A joke, dearest sister. Made in poor taste perhaps.” She clicked her tongue. “If I’m to be sent away, I won’t wait upon your pleasure.”

One didn’t miss the bitterness coloring her words. “I would not expect it, after such a concession.”

Turning away, Five flipped her hair over her shoulder, mouth set in an unhappy line. No matter how many times the interest was extinguished, it would bloom again. The only thing to do was finish things with Zero quickly and see to her sisters, ensuring there were other things to occupy their minds.

She left Five at the threshold to the keep, taking the stairs quickly and slipping into the library, the stones humming faintly with notes of Zero’s song. Inside, Two and Three lingered, their injuries being treated by a handful of medics who had not already been reassigned. Five had been the luckiest of them all, escaping Zero by keeping her out of reach, her spear maintaining the distance between them.

Those within the room looked up at her appearance, save for Three, whose eyes bore into the face of the woman who helped her, her hands hovering over her scissors as if considering. While One would have approached her immediately, eager to be done with the wretched task before her and Zero's sword heavy in her grasp, Two sprang to her feet. In her haste, she nearly knocked well-meaning medics flying as they attempted to patch the crosshatch of shallow cuts Zero had made of her flesh, though she wavered only moments to apologise profusely.

As Two neared, her hands grasped before her and twisting in conflicted anxiety, One could read it in her features.

"You still intend to leave us?" One asked, saving her sister the trouble of finding the words, and the relief that flooded Two's expression was well worth the effort.

"I could never leave Cent waiting with the children! He's so sweet, One, but I'm sure they're all lost without me there." Two smiled, her smile slipping into one of uncertainty. Her eyes tracked the gauze on One's neck, as if drawn, and after a moment, she seemed to rally. "Are you sure it's okay to bring them here?"

"I would not have extended the invitation if it were not."

In truth, the promise had been made before reports had come of Zero and her dragon advancing on the city from the Land of Sands, but One had never been able to stomach going back on her freely given word—not with her sisters.

Two clasped her hands before her chest, all her doubt and discomfort falling away. "Oh, I'm so excited, One! You'll have to meet them all!"

One tried to smile for her, but just as it had been with Five, it felt hollow and forced. It was difficult to celebrate a task yet half done. "Perhaps after this work with Zero is finished."

Two sighed, her brows drawing together. Instinctively, she reached out to grasp One's hand in her own.

"One... please don't do anything drastic while I'm away." Her words were soft, hurting and far too vulnerable, goodness in a world ravaged by monsters and human corruption. One covered the back of Two's hand with her own, squeezing it gently.

"I will await your return, Two. I would not do this without you." One reached out, tracing the evidence of her injuries with her fingertip, her touch as light as a feather. "Are you sure you're fit to travel?"

"Yes!" Two nodded, embracing One with a quickness that belied the exhaustion she surely felt, before releasing her once more. "I'll be back in a week, I swear it."

One nodded, the ghost of a smile on her lips as she watched Two dart off to collect her sword, still propped against the keep's wall. As much as One itched to end the matter with Zero as soon as possible, she would hold true to her word.

Satisfied she'd bidden her sister proper farewell, One's attention turned back to where Three had remained with the medic. Despite the lack of range afforded by her scissors, Three had emerged from the battle with Zero almost as well as Five had. One supposed that with both Two and Four running distraction, Three had easily slipped through the gaps in Zero’s awareness.

It was well that Three was in better shape than Four. One did not relish the idea of approaching her elder sister on her own.

The medic attending to Three looked up as One approached and flushed, bowing her head and excusing herself to Three’s great disappointment. She watched her go until One offered her a hand and helped her to her feet, the two of them nearly of height because of her sister’s slouch.

“Halfway around, but the numbers never change. One, one, one. Now and then,” she said, absently reaching up to run her fingers through her own hair. “She smells like sunflowers… Bitter.”

One only nodded. “Will you see her with me?”

Three didn’t respond, but she turned and began in the direction of the keep’s dungeon in her shambling gait.

The smoke followed them down onto the landing, pooling around their knees like the weight of it was too much to bear, but they didn’t linger to see it dispersed, only turned down a corridor and passed through the arch of the keep’s forgotten servant’s quarters.

Cathedral City’s keep used to support hundreds of men and women, but with One’s occupation of it, it rarely saw a fraction of as many people. Still, the stone remembered. Passageways to kitchens and empty larders, bed chambers with cots stacked atop one another, and yes, even a dungeon remained, even if One had no use for them. At least, she hadn’t had use for them before today.

Zero had been brought here after her final, desperate attack, after One had slid around her sword and brought her to the ground with a heavy elbow between her shoulder blades. Her dragon had been reduced to smoking remains, the scales and spines burnt from his flesh by Gabriel’s fire, but with his last act he had shielded Zero from the blow. It was only her missing arm which had weakened her enough to be taken into custody. She had bled and bled and bled… So much blood, yet the wound didn’t close, didn’t clot. The soldiers needed to wrap her shoulder in rags to keep her alive long enough for One to pass judgement on her.

Until then, the old cells had been opened, the sconces given fresh torches and set alight for the first time in years.

That was all that had changed, though. When Three and One stepped into the dungeon, they breathed in dust and age, air so stale it was hard not to choke on it. The cobwebs clung to the stone, old buckets speckled black with fungus sat abandoned in the corners of cells, and nests of filth and rotting straw lingered between cracks in the mortar. The room was still as death and just as pungent, and One frowned.

A rat darted across the gloom, disappearing under a chair which had splintered and broken even without anyone to sit in it. Three followed it with her eyes, fixated by the living as ever.  

“Zero,” One said, looking for her sister within the cell. It was light enough to see all but the most shadowed corners of the cells, and from one of them, the faint, stubborn twist of Zero’s song called out to her. “It is regrettable things happened as they did.”

From within the cell, chains clinked and shifted, and a sharp exhale of laughter cut the silence. One stood unflinching, but Three turned to face Zero completely as she stepped from the darkness, face pale.

Any pity One might was felt at the sight of her was doused by the memory of Four, her face twisted in pain after nearly losing her leg.

"I see you've got that little cut all nice and patched up." Zero's voice was low and dangerous, her tone edged with pain. "I was so fucking _close_ to making an example of you for the rest of the little shits. You couldn't have just stood there and taken it, could you? That’s what’s goddamn regrettable."

The very notion of such a thing was enough to make One's mouth tighten, but her leash on her temper was absolute. Giving in to Zero’s provocations would get her nowhere, and so One exhaled, forcing her hands to remain open and loose at her sides, grip easy on the dragonbone blade.  "There are things we need to discuss, Zero."

"You want to _talk_? Give me a goddamn break!" Zero's voice was low and sharp with pain, words the only weapon she had left. "You're just a dead woman walking, One. You and all your beloved little sisters—all of you are going to fucking pay for what you've done today."

One's frown tightened into a scowl at the vow. It was unsurprising—One supposed that once her usual option of murder and violence was stripped from her, Zero could fall back to little else. She always had been disappointing that way, but One had far more pressing matters to attend to than mourning the loss of a relationship she'd never had.

"And you will answer for your crimes as well—in time. Before that, there is the matter of your arm—" One nodded to Three, who watched Zero with unsettling focus. "And _this_."

One pulled the dragonbone blade from beneath her arm and lifted the cloth from it. It gleamed faintly in the flickering light of the dungeon. Their songs all stuttered at once; even Zero was not immune, it seemed.

Swallowing, One said, "Three is going to examine your arm, and you are going to answer my questions."

"Am I?" Zero asked, and though her voice was but a croak, her snarl was more threat than parody. "You should tell Three her mindfuck spells aren't going to work on me as well as it does on her toy soldiers."

Three’s laugh had always been light, almost dazed. It could not echo, even in the space of the dungeon, but One—and Zero too—looked to her immediately. "They all say that," Three breathed, and she tilted her head to the side, the hint of a smile on her lips. "Sticks and stones and words and _bones_ …"

A moment passed between the three of them, and One tried not to imagine the implications of Three’s words—or how she could find this _funny_.

There was a sharp inhale from within the cell. "Enough with the shit. I'm not telling you a goddamn thing." Zero's voice was firmer than before. She fell back against the wall of the cell, sliding down to the ground, and gave the two of them a tired grin, a shadow of the wicked snarl she’d worn storming the keep. "So what will it be, One? How about some lashings to warm you up?"

Three looked as though she’d hardly heard Zero, swaying toward the cell and fumbling with the lock, but One tensed and remained where she stood. She wasn’t sure which she resented more—that Zero thought her cruel enough for torture, or that she had come with the intention to kill them all and now meant to give her _nothing_.

One held her head high. “I will not whip you, Zero. How one handles rebellion says much about the justice of the cause. You will receive a fair trial for your actions and be sentenced in accordance with our laws.” She moved to Three’s side and helped her sister with the lock. “Once you are fit enough to defend yourself.”

She would not have the murder of her sister on her hands, even if Zero had sought the end of the world. She was no warlord.

" _Defend myself_? Let me out of this cell and I'll show you exactly how well I can defend myself right now—"

"Enough, Zero," One cut in, weary of the pointless tirades. Instead, she looked across to Three. "Let us proceed, then."

Together, the two of them entered the cell, One with Zero’s dragonbone blade bared as a warning, Three with little care for the danger. In the fresh candlelight, Zero looked even sicker, pale and sweating, her whites soaked with blood from her arm and ash from Michael's body. One lingered a few paces back, watching Three kneel by Zero and touch her face, the tension in Zero’s shoulders like a bowstring drawn tight.

One watched her elder sister's fist tightened convulsively in the blood-caked white silk of her dress. A harsh note of song had already settled in her throat, should Zero dare to lash out at Three, yet she needn't have worried. When fingers like claws reached for Three, her sister caught Zero by the wrist, unperturbed and far from discouraged. The muscles in Zero’s arm strained, but the dragonbone cuff left her weak, their recent battle taking even more from her. The most she could do was jerk her head away from Three’s prodding fingers, her gaze coming to settle on One instead.

It reminded her of the warlords, the way they’d seethed and thrashed, narrowed eyes and deep scowls. It was all hate, all blood-thirsty wishes. Zero would have killed her right then if she could have, One knew.

“Don’t make this harder, Zero,” One told her, voice touched with song.

“Since when have I fucking taken orders from _you_?” Zero snapped.. “Fuck you, One. You’re a fucking farce—”

Zero’s words died in her throat, strangled by pain as Three touched what remained of her arm. She ran her fingers along the severed flesh and bone with little regard to Zero herself, and only when she tried to pull away did Three grasp her by the shoulder and hold her in place.

“Such beautiful skin, Zero,” Three said, giving the stub a squeeze that left Zero looking ready to heave.

One cleared her throat, a prickle of concern raising hairs at the back of her neck. “Three,” she warned, but her sister merely hummed, continuing her inspection.

Pressing back into the wall as much as possible, Zero blinked hard, gritting her teeth. "Some trial, One. You're just hiding behind the law to justify killing me." Zero's grin was a rictus of pain, but despite it, those eyes seemed knowing. "I bet you believe in your 'fair trials' and 'innocence', too. _Justice_. What a crock of shit. You and your sisters don’t know a damn thing."

One's mouth tightened. It was eerie—barely a half an hour gone, Five had had much the same reaction. It was of no matter, however.

“I've scarcely the need to hide. I’m offering you a chance to repent,” One said, watching Zero's expression carefully, her brow knit.

"Well then. You can shove your _repentance_ up your fucking ass, you goddamn son of a—" Zero cut off mid-profanity, her entire body shuddering as Three's fingers pressed firmly into what remained of her arm.

“Three.” One took the distance between them in a single stride and let her hand rest heavy on Three’s shoulder. “Do you have what you need?”

Three laughed under her breath again, her hands withdrawing to begin to remove the wrappings, though she didn’t even look at One. Her lips were too close to Zero's face, however, her body tense and far too eager. One hadn't seen Three so interested in anything other than her dolls and soldiers in a long time. Five had looked much the same when she’d asked for Zero, and the similarity between them made One shiver.

"Like the petals of the flower, blood-soaked destruction," Three murmured, and though her voice was low and dreamy, One could hear every word. "It is so lovely to examine you, Zero. I've never had the chance to play with an Intoner before. I can fix it. I can fix _you_."

Zero's jaw set firmly, and One watched a muscle jump along it. The sheen of sweat on her brow was heavy, the blood and ash clinging like filth to her skin.

"Do me a favour and sew your own goddamn mouth up, or I'll—" Zero choked on her own words, letting loose a string of savage curses beneath her breath. One heard her swallow unsteadily, before forcing out between her teeth, "I'll rip out your fucking tongue."

Three's smile only widened at the threat, almost daring, if Three could ever said to be such.

Zero's head thudded back against the filthy stones, her breath harsh and rasping in One's over-sensitive ears. When she finally spoke, her words held a bitter sort of amusement.

"And you all have the goddamn nerve to think I'm the monster," Zero sneered, looking between the two of them. "At least I know it."

Disgusted, One turned her attention from Zero and watched as Three leaned back, lost in thought. While Three was given to… her eccentricities, and her touch was none too gentle, One did not believe her sister would cause Zero true harm. She'd been truthful when she'd promised to give Zero a fair trial. The warlords before them had crushed rebellions with the threat of pain and death, executing those who had stood in their way before she and her sisters rose; One would not be the same.

One asked, “You can stabilize her?”

Three turned and nodded, her smile distracted and dreamy. “Tools. Needles. Thread. A new arm. I can fix this.”

One squeezed the hilt of the dragonbone blade, choosing to believe that the weapon was the only reason her song skipped a beat. “Go tell a medic to outfit you with what you need. We aren’t giving her a new arm, Three.”

Three nodded and wandered out of the cell, but before she had left the dungeon, One’s caution got the better of her. She raised her voice just a fraction and called out, “Do _not_ bring back an arm.”

Three didn’t stop, didn’t hesitate, but One was still certain she'd been heard. It was only when Three had vanished up the stairs that she turned back to her prisoner, her stomach twisted oddly as she laid eyes on the space where Zero's arm had been.

“I wonder sometimes if I should have sought you out earlier. I knew this was coming. Perhaps that dragon needn’t have been involved.” Perhaps her measures with Gabriella needn’t have been necessary either.

Zero's lip curled—a snarling, cornered dog.

"You think your false mercy means a goddamn thing to me?" Zero's voice was breathless and weak. "You killed Michael. You, with your daemon at your beck and call. Tell me. Did Gabriella know she'd become a fucking monster, or were you both still pretending it'd all work out wonderfully?"

Bitterness like bile rose in her throat, the image of Gabriella swimming before her eyes. She blinked, and Gabriel’s heartbeat came to her, the steady one-two of life that she had traded her best—her _only_ —friend for.

Swallowing the venom on her tongue so it bubbled in roiled within her gut instead, she whispered, "That’s enough, Zero."

"Not so goddamn self-righteous now, are we? _One_." Zero's teeth bared in a vicious, bloodthirsty smile. "You make me want to gag. All I hear from you are delusions about mercy and world peace, but you know what? It's sad! You keep thinking your shitty intentions matter in the end! Take it from me. They _don't_ matter. Your actions amount to nothing, because it's all going to hell the same way."

“You, who sought to end the world, want to lecture _me_?”

The world had been blessed with six Intoners to protect it, but Zero had meant to upend all of that and for what? Power? A title? It made One’s hands shake, made her want to break something. She wanted Zero to understand what she’d done, to know the choices she’d forced One to make, but there was no point to it all, and that was the hardest part to swallow. Zero was incapable of caring; there would be no repentance in her, no matter what One offered.

And that was why she would have to die. For the rest of them. For the world.

One inhaled sharply, glancing sideways. “Have care, Zero. You aren’t helping your case.”

Zero's laugh was an exhausted one, resigned mirth bubbling up past her lips—as though trying to get a rise from One amused her. One was silent, her expression frozen as she met Zero's narrowed eyes.

"Go fuck yourself, One," Zero finally said, looking away, as though dismissing One from her attention entirely. "I'm done listening to you yammer."

“Then I won’t continue to waste my breath. Three will return to care for your arm shortly.”

With that, One turned, her mind racing, lips pressed tight together. There was no use to any of it. The only thing left to do was to prepare for Zero’s inevitable execution. The dragonbone blade was still in her hands, and that gave her more to work with than the toothless, desperate threats Zero had offered.

So with a final glance at her sister, One closed the cell door behind her and left, her footsteps echoing in the desolate walls of the keep.

*

Despite One's misgivings, Zero's harsh words and vicious, apocalyptic prophecies lingered on her mind, the kernel of doubt growing until it infected her every thought with its creeping toxicity. Perhaps it really was nothing, no more than mad words from an even madder woman, thrown out only to sour her victory. Given all she'd sacrificed, the friends she'd lost, how she and her sisters had all fought for this peace… she still had to be certain.

It had been days since the assault—and days since One had sealed herself in the keep with her books and the dragonbone blade, leaving only to slip into bed pressed between her sisters, Four’s head in her lap or Five’s arm warm across her hips. When she was not sleeping, she spent her time with the threatening ebb and swell of song from the prison beneath her feet, the chaotic notes of it enough to drive a human mad with enough exposure.

Her sisters cared little for her research, and commented often on her absence, yet One was implacable, unmoveable in her caution.

Yet even when the fifth day had come and passed, there was no assurance in her, no knowledge that soothed her fears. The candles burned low, their wicks nearly exhausted, and One, bleary-eyed and sluggish, pushed aside a scroll to search for the next.

Three servants had come hours ago to exchange the stumps of candles for fresh ones and deliver her evening meal, but now it had to have been nearly dawn, and her dinner sat cold and untouched. She glanced over it without feeling even a pang of hunger; her appetite had waned with her desire for sleep, sifting through ancient texts for something that would deliver her from her doubts.

She rubbed at her eyes, stifled a yawn, and then rose from her seat, back aching from poring over  tomes all night. There was a dull headache forming at the back of her skull, and she knew it would only be a matter of time before it spread. Perhaps a walk before sunrise would clear her mind.

Picking up candle on her desk, she slipped from between the shelves, quiet as a ghost in the massive library, yet her thoughts swirled, circling around and around.

_...ancient enemy of dragons, which remain the only creatures to be able to dispatch the flower…_

One touched her temple as she slipped between the library’s great iron doors. That text had been incomplete as had many others, lost to the degradation of time, but what remained did little but raise questions One didn’t even know existed.

Dragons were the enemy of a flower, yet they were also the only things capable of killing Intoners. The flower, whatever it represented, had disappeared nearly two centuries ago, but the power of song had existed even before that, noted in various reports. These may have been ancient Intoners, but One was hesitant to believe such. When song was mentioned in the scrolls, it was only ever as a vile thing, the creatures which commanded it likened to demons and known to rise even when their bodies were torn asunder.

One’s lips parted, exhaling softly, and she hesitated at the base of the stairs to the keep’s exterior, her head pounding. There was so much she needed to put together, but she was jabbing at the darkness, her gathered clues like fireflies in the night. She needed to shine proper light on this; if ancient intoners were scourges on humanity, what did that mean for One and her sisters?

However much she had searched for answers to Zero's vague threats of brewing catastrophe, her days had not given her the solutions she had sought, and it was with cautious optimism that she began to weigh her options. While she had ever been one to attempt to strike the final blow—Bass, Bartas and Zero could all attest to such—she had never acted alone. Even as children still coming to grips with the world and their power, she had always had her sisters to rely on. She'd always had their support.

She could not do this alone. Ideally, perhaps Five or Three could lend their skills to her—what Three might lack in motivation, Five would supply, and the same held true for Three countering Five's comparative lack of curiosity. Perhaps, together, they would find the answers to the questions that lingered beyond Zero's defeat.

As the keep was off limits to all but herself, One’s sisters had been given quarters in the western overlook, which had once been a grand expansion of the keep, a bastille built atop a sharp incline with three separate wings. Now it only saw use while entertaining military leaders and the escorts her sisters brought when they visited. Turric had seen the place swept and accommodated for her sisters, and there they remained while One toiled.

In the pre-dawn stillness, the long walk from the keep to the western overlook was unnaturally quiet—perhaps One had grown too accustomed to song, her sisters always close at hand—yet it passed quickly.

Guards met her at the doors to the overlook, welcoming her inside with a slap of their spearbutts against the stone and sharp salutes. One passed them by with a wave and slipped inside.

The quarters set aside for her remaining sisters were quiet when One pushed her way inside, the torches burned low, the great banquet halls within now empty of the servants, retainers and the would-be politicians hoping to use the Intoners' new rule to further their own ambitions—much the way Partition had, once. Her boots echoed through the hall, but despite the dark and quiet, she did not feel alone.

One only hesitated at the threshold of the grand sleeping quarters set aside for her sisters and their disciples, inhaling softly, letting her palm rest on the ornate wooden doors. Her mastery of song was second to only Zero's, and for a moment, she allowed herself to linger on the reassuring tug of her sisters' songs, just at the edge of awareness. Even from outside the chambers, she could practically feel the strained notes of Four's song against her skin, the way the sound was strangled and forced, becoming something odd and troubling even in slumber. Beyond that, further in, the bone-deep, growling hum of Five's sank into her flesh. One did not need to linger on the details of it to realize Five was otherwise occupied with her many lovers even this late at night—regardless of her devotion to the cause, One’s denial of Zero and noticeable absence had turned Five to other sources of distraction.

Turning away from the chambers, One let her hand fall back to her side, looking back out into the darkened halls behind her. While she'd come to regard Five as something of a comfort of late, the first port of call when she began to doubt, Three's brilliance would serve her ends just as well.

She reached out, seeking her sister's presence in the darkness, only relaxing when she felt the threads of Three's song dance along the edge of her mind, just the hint of something subtle and all pervasive, hidden beneath the stronger tones of Four and Five. The lazy, unfocused notes of song practically crawled through the very building itself, but at least One could be sure she'd remained as ordered—that she had not indulged in her curiosities on One's own soldiers the way she had on villagers in her own lands.

One's mouth tightened then. _Monsters_ , history had called what may well have been their predecessors. The word twisted in her chest, and she did not want to dwell on all she'd read in the reports.

Three was difficult to find, even in the best of times, and One's slow, painstaking search through halls and corridors finally took her outside to one of the open-air terraces on the top floor. The view over the ruins of the city was one of the best she'd seen, save for those from the keep's tallest towers. The keep itself drew the eye, the unused rooms still lit up with torches, should Zero find a way to escape her new dragonbone chains.

Zero. Stubborn, vindictive, and for all the blunt carelessness of her words, still as mysterious as ever. What did she know of an Intoner's true purpose? The question itched at One, as it had for days until it felt as though her hard-learned patience felt ready to snap. Would one so besotted with the idea of blood and violence care for such history at all?

Whatever Zero knew, it would not save her in the end. One craned her neck, looking instead to the dark spire in the distance that housed Gabriel, just a suggestion against the black of night.

"A weapon left without a war," Three murmured from just behind her, answering the quiet summons of One's song without so much as a greeting. One spared her a glance, watching her sister's eyes slowly focus on the tower. " _Gabriel_."

"Preventing the war was well worth the sacrifice," One replied, but it was impossible to keep the bitterness from leeching into her tone, making a liar of her with every word. "We ended Zero in a single battle, when such a fight could have been drawn over the space of years. She—" One paused then, forcing herself to take a steadying breath. "Gabriella would have been glad to know it had not been in vain."

Her throat felt hot, even after how much time had passed. Her best friend for a weapon. Their pact. Gabriella's _choice_. She tipped her head back, swallowing. She would have appreciated Gabriella's blunt counsel now.

Three sank to her knees without a further word, seemingly done with provoking such painful regrets. Instead, she let her head fall back against One's thigh, the weight of her heavy, solid and strangely reassuring. As the moments slipped on by, One looked down to the top of Three's head, watching the play of firelight on her hair and wondering if her sister had fallen asleep once more.

There was no trace of the interest she’d shown in the cell with Zero, none of her worrying humor or great fixation. She was simply Three, her sister, brilliant and docile.

"Zero's trial..." Three trailed off, her tone dreamy as she lifted her scissors into the light, opening and closing them idly. "She will die."

It was not a question.

One's gaze narrowed, and from this angle, she could not see Three's expression through the veil of her violet hair. On impulse, she ran her gloved fingers through the loose strands, listening instead to the way Three sighed at the touch.

Three was a threat. One was not so foolhardy as to dismiss the experiments, the reports she'd received from Octa on her sister's research. She was always a worry, seeming to lack the moral compass or sense of responsibility that guided her sisters. Even so, One would never see her as anything but her sister, someone to be protected and guided. Someone to be loved.  

It was more than One would ever afford Zero.

"She will die, yes," One agreed, slowly rubbing at the spot at Three's temple, smiling as her sister leaned into it. "So say our laws."

Three's laughter was quiet, bubbling up past her lips in a vague, off-kilter giggle. " _Laws_. What are laws to ants? What are laws to gods? We are Intoners."

One's smile slipped, then, and she exhaled sharply. Such an attitude was a dangerous one, even was it not Three who spoke the words.

"You have been talking to Five," she observed, for it was easy to read between the lines. Two would never condone such an attitude, and while perhaps Four might agree, never would she voice it.

Three shrugged, resting her head more heavy against the side of One's thigh. "Five is… helpful."

Helpful in what, One was too afraid to ask. She let the silence linger between them, instead occupying herself with the calming, repetitive motions of combing her fingers through Three's hair, watching Three continue to toy with her scissors.

"What does it mean to be an Intoner?" Three asked then, the detached, dreamy quality to her voice dropping, scoured away by sheer intensity as she looked up, meeting One's gaze directly. " _The_ question. Perhaps it is only one that matters. Why are we the way we are? Who are we to deny our true purpose, even for law?"

A chill ran down One's spine, and for a moment, she felt starved of air.

_The fate of an Intoner_. For the longest time, she'd been so certain it was defeating Zero, that it was bringing peace to the lands—and yet even with all those goals fulfilled, nothing felt right. Even before Zero's words, she had been unable to celebrate, and for what?

She didn't know.

"Because we are not puppets to dance at the whim of fate," One replied, her voice even despite the prickle of sweat starting up between her shoulder blades.

Six sisters, all linked by song, now with a history of mad intoners behind them and Zero exemplifying the very worst of what could happen. Then there was Three's fascination, her questions suddenly rearing up after but a handful of hours in that woman's presence, and Five's obsession, so potent even after just one encounter.

One had believed that she did not have to confront the matter alone, but both Five and Three felt as though they strayed too close. Four and Two would be no better, and perhaps One herself was blinded in some way, her emotion colouring objectivity as she struggled to make sense of old stories.

But One was the only one that could.

"Fate." Three laughed just once, and it was too short for One to read into it. "Unfortunate… I will no longer get to play with her. Zero." Three's lips curved up into a smile, and loosely clasped in her hands, her scissors closed with a snap. "She has proven… a fascinating subject. That arm..."

The alarmed spike in One's gut was almost sickening, cold sweat starting up beneath her gloves and woollens. Zero's _arm_. Turric had the arm disposed of in the pyres. One had seen her take the arm away, had watched the pyres themselves burn to dust on the open plaza.

Could she be sure? One looked down at Three, her heart pounding in her throat. "Tell me you do not have her arm, Three."

Three only laughed, longer this time, as though she found One's alarm a source of amusement.

" _Three_ ," One snapped, song touching the name this time, and Three's laughter died on her lips.

Three was brilliant, perhaps more so than any of her sisters. Perhaps smarter than One. While One had always been able to pre-empt Five's selfish drives, Four's snarl of conflict and suspicion and Two's disastrous self-esteem, Three had ever been unpredictable. It only ever felt as though One remained a step behind her most quiet sister, and with Zero's arm in play...

"Odd. Such a small thing becomes… dangerous." Three tilted her head back, her expression unreadable as she said, "I do not have her arm."

One watched her for a few moments, indecisive. There was no way to be certain it was not another lie, so she would need to arrange to have some of her soldiers search Three's quarters for it. Her mouth tightened. So soon after the bloodbath of Zero's assault, she was not sure she could afford to lose any more people.

Finally, she nodded, still feeling ill.

"Please, get some rest," One managed, threading her fingers back through Three's hair, rubbing her thumb into the nape of her sister's neck. "Come dawn, we will begin preparing for the trial. The sooner we end this, the better we will all rest."

Maybe, with Zero finally out of the way, it would feel more like they'd won, but until then, One would find no comfort in sleep.

The sun painted the horizon pink as One helped Three to her feet and led her inside, bringing her to her quarters and tucking her into bed. Three looked without really seeing her as One bent over the bed and pressed her lips to crest on her forehead, wishing her pleasant dreams and taking the chance to glance quickly around the room, looking for anything that might be amiss. There were no bloodstains, no evidence of her experiments, but One still lingered at the door as she left, casting a final, uncertain look at her sister. And then she was gone.

While before Five had been otherwise occupied, now when One reached her room, the notes of her song were muted with what could only be sleep. She hesitated only a moment before pressing into the room, closing the door behind her with a quiet click.

Five might have begrudged her Zero, but she still kept to one side of the bed, One’s place carved out beside her, and the sight of her, wild golden curls turned ethereal in the faint morning light, made One sag with relief. She pulled off her boots and slid into bed beside her sister, fitted easily to the generous curves of her body, and Five shifted and stirred and pulled her closer until the heat of her skin and the smell of sweat and summer were all she knew.

There was too much to consider for One to delude herself with the promise of sleep, but even if she chased dreams all night in vain, she would always find some measure of ease in Five’s arms.

Behind her, Five pressed her face into pale blonde hair. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d intended to leave me to myself all night,” she murmured, sleep thick in her voice.

“You were hardly alone,” One says, setting her hand over Five’s and intertwining their fingers. Five pulled it against One’s stomach, nuzzling into her neck, and One hesitated, her conversation with Three burning through her thoughts no matter how she tried to banish it. “...There is much to do before the trial.”

“And you intend to take it all alone, as always.” Five’s breath was warm, her legs tangling with One’s beneath the duvet. She yawned. “Simply ask and I might relieve you of what troubles you, whatever it may be.”

Zero appeared behind One’s eyelids, pervasive even now, but it was not she who stilled One’s tongue. Three had spoken so lightly of abandoning everything they had worked towards for nature, for the fates spelled out for them in their blood and bones and song. And there could be no doubting Five had given her the words.

There were no secrets kept between them, but that was because One had never felt the need. Now she could not give her fears voice.

“It is… Nothing that will not see resolution with Zero’s trial.”

Five’s song gave a twist at that, a heavy note of want among the subdued tones, but when she spoke, her voice was perfectly even. “Then it can wait until morning, dear sister.”


	2. Chapter 2

The sun was high overhead when One stepped out of the keep with her escort: two knights, both who had fought for her during the rebellion. They stood to her left, one armed with a banner bearing her sigil and the other with sword and shield, armor waxed and polished until it shone as bright as the sun. 

Word of Two’s return had reached One with the changing of the guard, leaving her just enough time to arrange to meet her sister with soldiers at hand. Despite the shadow that hung over her arrival, Two would delight in the welcoming party, and the smile it would spark across her face would make all the ceremony worthwhile. 

Yet noticeably absent from the guard had been Turric, almost a fixture at One’s side. In the days since Zero’s defeat, she’d become scarcer and scarcer, only showing up to speak briefly with the knights on duty before disappearing once more. It was unlike her to be gone so long—even the extensive preparations in the hours before Zero’s assault had not been able to keep her away. 

With her concerns with Three, Five, Four, One hadn't had the time to become troubled with Turric's absence. In the quiet morning and without the draw of her books and research to distract her, she found it tugged at her thoughts now. 

“Sergeant,” One said, tilting her head to regard one of the soldiers. “Where is Turric?”

His dark hair boasted only a few strands of silver, pulled back into a wolf-tail as was customary, but despite his age, he still floundered at the direct question. Patient, One waited for him to gather his thoughts, watching his lips flatten into a thin line. 

After a few moments, he met her gaze, and said, “The lieutenant has been… Occupied, my lady. There is business which requires her.”

One frowned, dissatisfied with the evasive nature of his response. “Am I not privy to the happenings of my own land?”

“Of course.” He glanced at the other knight, who stared straight ahead as though she wasn’t there at all, offering him no help. “She has been dealing with an issue within our ranks, my lady.” He hesitated. “Deserters, probably.”

“Soldiers have been leaving?”

“Not showing up for their duties,” he clarified, his voice growing more certain. “The lieutenant has been investigating.”

Ice flashed through One’s veins, but she allowed none of it to filter out to her voice as she asked, “Their belongings? Were they left?”

“Couldn’t say. We’ve just been told to report the names of those who don’t show.”

She turned her gaze back to the plaza stretching out before her, mind whirling. 

A good few moments had passed before One turned back to him, her tone carefully mild. “The Mercurial Gate’s seal has been observed?” 

When Cathedral City had first come under her command, she had seen the gate closed and spellbound, exiling from the world whatever horrors still lingered within. Gabriella had been adamant, had wanted to see the ritual done herself, had demanded the magic remain even after she was gone—and One could scarcely blame her. 

The battle had been a blur of magic and blood, One’s memories shifting like a desert mirage, unclear to even her most painstaking consideration. The old lords of the lands had met them here for their final battle, so easily making pieces of Two and Three and Four—even Five. When it had been only One, her song had rampaged, snapping the final seal, and from the Mercurial Gate, black ichor had flowed, writhing and sentient. Only Gabriella’s intervention had saved One from being swallowed whole, but the experience still left her with spaces in her memory, moments forgotten and never to be regained. 

What she did remember was the black mass in its final throes, condensing in on itself and then blossoming like a—

She shivered, lips thinning, the sudden realization making her tense. It had been a flower. 

The texts on the creature were scarce and had never described it so completely, yet if that had been a manifestation of the flower, the Mercurial Gate might be the only bastion against it. That the seal remained intact was paramount. 

“I believe the lieutenant sent a squad last night… I couldn’t say what they saw, my lady.”

One clasped her hands behind her back, looking back to the plaza, her eyes narrowed. “I would like to speak to the lieutenant as soon as possible. After we are finished here, find her and bring her to me.”

The sergeant bowed deeply. “Yes, my lady.”

Had the seal truly failed, One knew the response would have been immediate and devastating. The last time the gate had opened, the city had been near levelled, yet if the disappearances were not the work of the abomination behind the gate… One touched her temple briefly, feeling a headache beginning to form. On the cusp of Zero’s trial and with too many late nights spent researching ancient Intoners, she prayed Turric's troubles were merely desertions. Anything more would require extensive investigations—and One already had an unfortunate inkling of what may of transpired. 

Yet there was no time for such thoughts with Two so close. Her sister had always been quick to notice something amiss, and doubtless she’d want to know what worried One so. 

Of these matters there was little One was willing to tell her. 

The three of them lapsed into silence as One tried to unsnarl her thoughts from her worries, instead attempting to focus on her sister’s imminent arrival. Thankfully, she did not need to wait long. She stood facing the plaza, and no more than a handful of moments passed before Two and her disciple crested the stairs, her smile brilliant and contagious even with Zero’s song still humming quietly beneath the stones at One's feet. In an instant, Two’s song ebbed and swirled along her skin, raising hairs, wrapping her in a sunny warmth she'd not known she'd missed until that moment. One started down the stairs as Two crossed the plaza at a run, and soon she was crushed in a bone breaking embrace, her senses filled with the exuberant notes of her sister’s song, the smell of sand and wildflowers. 

In spite of it all, One felt a smile tug at her lips as Two lifted her from the ground, returning the embrace as best she could. Only Two had such an effect on her—on all of their sisters, really.

“Two,” One sighed into the hug breathlessly, her hand spread across one shoulder blade. “You are hurting me.”

Abruptly, the notes of Two's song soured, becoming discordant and faltering against One's senses. She sprang back, a hand pressed to her mouth, blinking rapidly, her expression stricken, and One was dismayed to see a line of devastating tension through her shoulders. 

It was unusual for Two to succumb to her scarcely concealed anxieties so soon after arrival, but One supposed the circumstances were... less than desirable. 

Before One could reassure her sister, Two began talking, her words coming in a desperate rush. "Oh One, I'm so sorry, how can I ever make it up to you? I was just so happy to see you I could _burst,_ even considering the trial and -" 

"Lady Two," Cent broke in, resting his hand against Two's shoulder gently, and One had to feel a degree of relief at the distraction he afforded Two when she required it the most. "Lady One looks to be perfectly fine, and she knows you'd never wish her harm."

Even with Cent's words and gentle touch, Two's song was still brittle, unbalanced to One's keen senses, too passionate and too sensitive in all the wrong ways. Perhaps One should have watched her tongue more closely—she knew how fragile her sister could be. 

There was so little One could do to protect Two from herself, however. 

"Yes, Cent. You're right," Two managed, and though her nod was hesitant, when she looked down at One, her smile had returned. "Perhaps I could try out one of my new recipes tonight? You'd be sure to adore it!" 

“I would love that,” One said, affection lifting her voice. She felt Two’s song hum pleasantly then, fragile notes smoothing back into the joy so characteristic of her sister. It was a peaceful repose from the long nights spent with the disjointed notes of Zero’s song reverberating through her, and though concerns still weighed heavy on her shoulders, with Two she could forget—even if only for an hour. Trailing her fingertips down the back of Two’s forearm to slip her hand into hers, she glanced first at Cent and then back to Two. “Shall we?”

"Yes, I think we shall!" Two's smile grew even brighter, but the squeeze she gave One's hand was painstakingly gentle this time. She looked back over her shoulder to her disciple. "Cent, there is something that I would speak with my sister about, so... please see to our soldiers. We'll be leaving some of them here with the orphans while we travel, so it would be best to start the preparations, don't you think?" 

Cent returned Two's smile as he swept his hand out, offering her an extravagant bow as he replied, "Your wish is my command, Lady Two. Take whatever time you need with Lady One."

One nodded as Cent moved off toward where Two's travelling party lingered, and then turned to her own escort, meeting the eyes of the soldier with her banner. “Would you accompany my sister’s disciple and ensure he has everything he needs?” 

She was loathe to release him upon her citadel, but for the chance alone with Two, she would gladly make the concession. The woman was clearly surprised by her request, but with no chance for argument, she fell in behind Cent and followed him across the plaza, One’s banner bobbing through the air as they walked.

The apprehension was palpable as One then turned her gaze on the other. “And sergeant… See to what I’ve requested.”

He bowed low and murmured, “Of course, my lady.”

Once he had taken his leave, Two sent her a questioning look, but One reassured her with a tentative smile and turned, leading her away from the keep and toward the western overlook.

“Your work with the orphans is going well, I take it,” One began conversationally, noting the way Two glanced back at the keep’s great doors. “You are truly a beacon of hope for the next generation, Two.”

"Well, we all do what we can, right? I'm just happy knowing those kids will grow up cared for. That's something precious to me," Two replied, and from her frown and the uneasy way she shifted, she must have felt the reverberations of Zero's song from even beneath the stones.

While her sisters were all gifted in the song, One had not expected such sensitivity from Two. It only reinforced her desire for caution. As gentle and fragile a soul as Two was, exposing her to Zero's toxicity would be a mistake. The overlook offered a refuge, one One would offer gladly.

From Two's conflicted expression, however, it seemed that she would deny herself that mercy. 

"Your work with Zero... how..." Two paused for a long moment, perhaps thinking better of asking questions to which she dared not know the answer. The silence stretched between them as they crossed the plaza hand in hand and took the stairs toward the ramparts, but Two finally managed to find her tongue once they had left the keep behind. "I really must ask. How is she?"

One took the stairs without thinking, her feet guiding her while her mouth worked into a frown. She had not hoped to discuss Zero before the trial, least of all with Two. 

“Unruly,” One finally allowed, thinking of the rancorous twist of her song that permeated every room of the keep. “But she is subdued. I don’t foresee any issues before the trial.”

Nothing that wasn’t insults, threats, or veiled promises for the end of the world, anyway.

"Oh... of course. That's wonderful to hear," Two managed, just half a step behind One. She slowed as they reached the top of the ramparts, the wings of the overlook just visible in the distance, and tugged One to a halt by the hand she still held. 

Two's eyes tracked down, and One watched, silent as her sister pressed her other hand to the vambraces protecting her hands. Her fingertips traced the ornate designs on the back of them, light as a feather, a restless habit she'd fostered since the early days. 

It was the way her smile had faded that began sounding alarms in One's mind, however. It was the way the serenity of her song became forced. 

One waited, reminding herself to be ever patient with Two, to be satisfied in allowing her sister time to gather her thoughts, to speak her mind. 

"She is dangerous, I really do agree…" Two's words were reluctant, and given how poorly she dealt with conflict at all, it came as no surprise. Her song trembled, almost imperceptibly, all along the fatal faultlines One was far too familiar with. "But don't you feel like this is wrong, One? She's one of _us_."

One glanced down to their intertwined hands, brow pinched. For all Two's reluctance to involve herself in conflict, there was nothing but sympathy in her voice, a genuine _caring_ that always left One aching. That it was directed at Zero was better than she deserved. 

“She killed many in her attempt to take Cathedral City.” One's thoughts swirled with visions of Gabriella, and her lips thinned, chest tightening. “She tried to kill you. There is nothing I can do.”

"Well... maybe if we just tried harder?" For all that Two was pressing the topic, it sounded more like a question than anything so harsh as a rebuke. One watched Two's brows draw together, the tones of her song becoming more uneasy and brittle as she struggled on. "She's our sister, One. She's the same as us! Can't we just..."

One squeezed her sister’s hand when she trailed off, gentle. She understood why Two would have such reservations. Had she not been so sure that putting Zero down would be the only way to stem both obsessions and chaos, perhaps she may have been swayed. As it was, her decision was final. 

She would protect her sisters, and she did not include Zero among them. It was time Two understood that. 

“Zero is not one of us, Two. She has forsaken that right.”

"That's not possible." Two shook her head. That was interesting—she had to have given this topic a great deal of thought, if she would press forward with what could well be construed as blatant challenge. "She can't just turn her back on that. Not when we feel otherwise. Right? We need to help her, not... not just kill her!"

“She shows no remorse, Two. She would do it again. Believe me.” One’s voice tightened with mounting frustration, no matter the warning manner in which Two's song had changed, straining, shifting. “I will not discuss this further. Not before the trial.”

"Then... let me see her?" For all the uncertainty in Two's voice, the arms she impulsively wrapped around One's shoulders were sure. "You know me. Maybe—maybe _I_ can talk some sense into her. Make her see that she's really sorry. Don't you want to get to know _Zero_?"

There it was—an adoring, reverent undercurrent to her voice as she spoke Zero's name. It was the same pull that stirred Five's obsession. It was the same curiosity that caused Three to instead turn her disturbingly incisive questions on Intoners instead. One would not allow Two to fall further victim to a monster. 

“ _Absolutely not_ ,” One hissed, perhaps a little too sharply. She pulled back from Two and held her sister at an arm’s length, eyes narrowed. She tasted bitter resentment, remembering Zero’s sneer, the endless discord of her song. “We are through speaking on the matter.”

Two's eyes went wide, and she reeled back as though One had struck her. Her song shifted, spiking beneath her skin, the notes too fragile, too easily broken. She swallowed, blinking rapidly, her blue eyes going distant, and she looked away from One.

"I—I'm sorry, One. I shouldn't have..." Two broke off, hoarse and hurting, tears welling up too fast. She wiped at her cheeks with her gloved hands, more of them threatening to fall. "I just don't understand anything anymore."

Pressure began to build behind One’s eyes, the spike of her sister’s song running through her like a blade. She regretted her words immediately, teeth clenched, wishing she had changed the topic sooner. 

“Forgive me,” One said gently, her voice lined with sweet notes of song. She touched Two’s hand, gently linking them once again. Despite the touch, Two’s song still beat rapidly, her eyes glassy with tears. “I didn’t mean to speak to you in such a manner. I am merely… Exhausted. I should not have taken it out on you.”

She stepped closer, using her other hand to sweep a curled lock of hair out of her sister’s face. “You are more kind than she deserves, Two. If there were a way to save Zero, I would not hesitate, but she thinks only of herself and what power she may gain from dooming the world. She is too dangerous to leave be.”

Two looked aside, biting down on her lower lip, a vain attempt to keep it from trembling.

"I suppose you know best," Two managed, and when she looked up, smiling, it was watery. "I... I trust you."

One might have sighed if it wouldn’t have made things worse. Two was delicate and fragile, her kindness only matched by her vulnerability. As One reminded herself of this over and over, her head began to throb.

“Thank you,” she said, pulling her sister into a gentle hug. “I promise things will turn out right, Two.”

Her sister's song still trembled, and so after a moment, One lifted her head and pressed her lips to Two’s, infinitely caring. It was quick, a promise that all was well between them, and One forced herself to smile. 

“Come.” One pulled lightly on her hand, nodding toward the overlook. From the look on her face, it would be some time before she could leave Two, and she struggled to keep her smile. Turric—and the rest of One’s concerns—would have to wait. “There are more pleasant things for us to discuss than Zero.”

*

Two days had passed, and yet One could not banish Two’s words from her mind.

It was an affliction, the way she kept turning over her every decision. Two had always been prone to naive optimism, and One knew that implicitly. But if there was even a chance of saving Zero, could she really turn her back on it? 

One reached for the cup of tea she’d been brought hours ago, sipping it carefully as a headache brewed between her eyes. It was long cold and offered her no relief, her body still tight with worry and a deep, insidious exhaustion. 

The conversation with Turric had hardly eased her mind. When Two had finally calmed, One had found Turric waiting for her in the corridor outside her quarters, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. She’d fallen to one knee when she saw One, offering her most sincere apologies for her absence and secrecy, explaining that she’d only hoped to handle the problem without adding to One’s workload.

All was not well in Cathedral City, she’d said.

Two soldiers had been reported as having stolen away in the night, their trails leading towards the forests to the south-west, and nearly a half dozen more had simply disappeared, their belongings all left within the barracks. One couldn’t quell the nausea as she asked whether bodies had been found, but Turric had assured her the keep had been searched three times over and nothing had turned up. It was as though they, too, had simply abandoned their posts. 

If only to make matters worse, a search of Three’s room had yielded a lock of pale hair, though nothing more. One ordered the hair disposed of immediately, her fears and reservations about speaking of Zero to Three confirmed. 

Still, the checks and rechecks of the Mercurial Gate had yielded no changes to the seal. That, and that searches of the overlook had turned up nothing of Zero’s arm were the only slivers of hope One held—that perhaps things were not snowballing out of control.

Yet even with Turric’s promise that she would up the guard and keep the soldiers on alert, the roil of unease which settled in One’s stomach could not be calmed. It pitched and rolled like a ship in a storm, her thoughts like dark clouds that wailed and gusted until every bit of her was sick with worry. 

_And guilt,_ she admitted, setting aside her tea and rubbing at her eyes, wishing desperately she had Gabriella’s counsel now.

Where she tended to deliberate, Gabriella had been a creature of action. The conquest of Cathedral City and the old lords had been merely hours old when Gabriella had wanted to discuss Michael. She had been so sure, knowing he was more than a match for both of them even without Zero in play, and there had been nothing of hesitation when she’d pressed her snout into One’s front, warm breath sinking in through torn woollens, and offered the solution: her wish. 

Painful memories… One of far too many which were intertwined with Zero’s existence, yet Two’s words persisted, and One found herself questioning even her own judgement. 

She rose from her daybed, scrolls and papers sliding into the gap her small body left, but she didn’t care. The trial lingered over the morning like a miasma, thick and choking, and One tried not to think of what was to come. 

_Don’t you want to get to know Zero?_ Two had asked with such sincerity in her voice. Like there was something beneath all that hate, all the apathy towards anyone and anything but herself.

Taking slow strides toward the doors of the library, One imagined the lower levels of the keep, the dark hallways and forgotten rooms. And down there, the only sister One had not been able to control.

If there was anything more to Zero, it was buried so deep that even One’s keen senses could not perceive it. She touched the pale white scar along her neck, the only evidence of Zero’s final act of desperation, and wondered if anything in Zero could be saved, salvaged, turned tame and docile.

One slipped between the doors and into the darkness of the uninhabited part of the keep, the only light from the faint glow of the runes which slithered along the walls of the keep, their purpose forgotten with time. 

The dungeon had been kept lit at One’s insistence, but the candles had been left by the door, flickering low. One could hardly blame the servants for not wanting to get closer to a monster, but all the same, she bent and picked up the tarrow candle, bringing it with her own to stand before Zero’s cell. 

Where before her thoughts had swirled, now they eluded her, slipping through her fingers like water at the sound of Zero’s song. She hesitated, looking in at the dark corners of the cell the candles could not brighten. 

“Sister,” she said at last, the word hesitant on her tongue.

She heard Zero shift, the clink of chains in the darkness far more threatening than they had true right to be. When her sister finally leaned forward into the hazy light, her smile was both lazy and confidant—hardly the smile of a woman broken by her defeat, imprisonment and the upcoming trial.

"One. I didn't figure you had the spine to come back here." Zero's mocking voice was smoother than it had been the last One had visited, though there was a rasp to it now that could only arise from lack of use. "Maybe I didn't give you enough credit for sheer stupidity."

Not to be deterred, One set one of the candles down near Zero’s cell. 

Zero was abhorrent to look upon, a reminder of everything that had culminated into what she was now: a crippled prisoner, now doomed to die. One kept her gaze steady though, loath to show even a hint of weakness before such a monster. 

Zero tilted her head back, the smirk on her lips easy. “You’re doing well, I see. I guess the preparations for your little wank of a trial are going smoothly? Incredible. It's like you actually enjoy wasting your time.” 

One straightened at the blatant goading, her shoulders and chin parallel with the stone, her heels together, incredulous of Zero's seeming nonchalance. “Say what you will, Zero. I intend for this trial to be fair.” 

Zero shrugged, her grin never fading. “The whole thing’s just too goddamn funny, One, if a little sad. You never give up, do you?”

Antagonism or no, she was right, and One’s gut churned. 

“There aren’t many who know of the Intoner’s weakness to dragonbone,” she started, ignoring the way Zero looked at her now. Could she, if only once, show that she was not above helping her sisters? “Where did you learn of it?”

Zero tilted her head, eyes narrowed. The chaotic symphony of her song circled One, hungry like some variety of restless predator. 

"Why? Going to follow in my footsteps and off a few Intoners yourself?" Zero's smile widened then, a feral thing. "Maybe you're worth a damn after all."

“There is more to be made of knowledge than weapons, Zero.” One frowned, shaking her head, refusing to give even a fraction beneath her sister's consideration. Somewhat spitefully, she added, “Had you learned that, you needn’t have ended up as you are.”

Zero's expression flickered, equal parts anger and frustration, evidence enough that the careless barb had found its target. Good—for once, it could be Zero on the back foot during their encounters.

"Do you ever _stop_ preaching?" Zero demanded, the snarl of her song, even muted by dragonbone, wrapping about One. It rang of violence and wanton destruction, of everything One had stood against since the very beginning. Though she was caged and weak, the sheer power of the song she commanded to wreak her horrors was terrifying. "Is that how you defeated the warlords? By talking them to death? Because I'm really feeling the need to off myself rather than go on listening to your crap."

A hot curl of anger started up in the pit of One's stomach, though it was strangled long before it could manifest. Instead, One met Zero's gaze squarely, her gesture open and honest. "Then allow me to listen instead—where did you discover the relation between dragons and Intoners?"

 _"Allow me to listen._ Give me a fucking break." Zero rolled her eyes, openly mocking, but whatever foul self-preservation instincts she somehow retained seemed to get the better of her. She shifted after a long moment, the ghost of a wince passing over her features when she leaned back against the filthy prison wall. 

"The 'where' doesn't exactly matter here, One. Yeah. _Maybe_ other people know about it. Maybe I offed every last one who did." Zero laughed then, the sound both soft and bitter, reverberating off the dank walls of her cell. "With Michael gone, you and I have done a bang job of fucking the world over."

It was unlike Zero to mention her dead dragon's name, and for her to do so on the eve of the trial... Perhaps it was an appeal to sympathy? One wouldn't have thought her capable of understanding such ploys. 

Unmoved, One replied, "So you’ve said. Yet you’re the only threat to peace here, and you will be judged accordingly."

But it was the third time Zero had mentioned that they together had ended the world. One pressed her lips to a line. Her thoughts swirled. Perhaps a contingency plan? Much like appeals to the heart, One didn’t believe Zero truly had it in her for such forward thinking. 

This was going nowhere, and One could not shake the sudden urge to forget this foolish notion that Zero could ever be more than— _this._ She needed to end Zero if there was even the slightest chance she would target her sisters again.

She lifted her chin, her will steeling. She had almost forgotten that her sister’s victories numbered only one: that she’d gotten into One’s head.

If she were honest, there was no hope for Zero. She’d known even before coming, yet she’d come all the same, allowing herself to be swayed by Two's kindness. It was foolish, so foolish. It would have been smarter to turn and go, leaving Zero to her trial on the morrow and perhaps snatching a half hour—if even that remained before the dawn—of sleep curled against Five before the sun rose. Yet One lingered still, words caught in her throat.

If Zero could offer her no remorse, no chance to spare her, then… Perhaps she could give her answers. Perhaps her most wayward sister could give her that before she forced One's hand one last time. 

She hesitated a moment, her frown growing. “I suppose you know of the ancient Intoners, then.”

That drew a reaction, and in the partial light, Zero's expression sharpened with something between surprise and… anger. 

"What the hell are you on about?" 

One waited for Zero to continue, waited for her impulsive, blundering sister to careen into some kind of explanation. As stubborn silence reigned, however, One exhaled sharply, clasping her hands behind her back. 

“Nothing that you need concern yourself with, sister. I had just wondered.” She paused, letting her gaze flicker across to Zero's. “Unless, of course, you’d care to tell me where you learned of our weakness.”

If compassion could not be gleaned from Zero, perhaps the knowledge could be pulled from her instead.

Zero's mouth twisted, the expression somewhere between a grin and a scowl, frightening and reeking of the promise of violence to come. "You want to extort it from me in the hours before I'm put on the stand? And here I thought you were the _good sister."_

“I’m not forcing you to do anything, Zero. I merely offer a trade.”

"Call it whatever the _fuck_ you want!" Zero exploded, surging forward in her chains, pulling at them until the brackets groaned. If One had believed Zero had been hateful and angry before, she'd been sorely mistaken. This— _this_ was a creature with little else but murderous rage to give her substance. "You can shove your trade up your ass, _sister dearest."_

One shouldn’t have been surprised; in truth, she wasn’t. Her sister had tried to take everything from her, so why would Zero now give her the answers she so desperately needed to ensure the safety of the world? One's features hardened, becoming stone.

“It is almost a relief to hear you now. I am reminded that there is nothing that could have been done for you. You're nothing but a traitor, and it is well—”

One froze mid-sentence, notes of song sliding across her skin at such proximity. Her brow knit—Four? She should have been in her quarters, and mostly certainly not _here._

“It is well you will be gone soon enough,” One finished, gathering herself up and lowering her tone, quiet enough so she could hear the heavy steps in the passage outside.

Four approached slowly, lingering at the door, but the tangled notes of her song could not lie to One. 

“Four,” One called, staring hard and angry at the door between them. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Caught, there was a violent snarl of song before Four could stifle it down, barely concealed beneath her fraction of control. Zero must have felt it too because she let out a bark of laughter, watching as the door opened tentatively, creaking terribly as Four hobbled inside. 

Like Five and Three, Four had not escaped the creeping, pervasive obsession Zero had inspired. Where Five's interest was possessive, Three's based in curiosity, Four's fixation on their imprisoned eldest sister had taken a far more troubling route. As One had feared, Four had been crippled by Zero's blade, and any observer could see that such a perceived imperfection both shamed and disgusted her. Rightly, she'd held Zero responsible, but it was her state of mind that had given One pause. 

As ever with Four, her thoughts, her logic, her emotions—they all knotted together until she could no longer tell one apart from the other, until she had come to loathe Zero with such bone-deep intensity that One had begun to fear their prisoner would not make it to trial, ban on the keep be damned. 

Even now, Four's song twisted and strained at the very sight of Zero. The muted, forced notes of it smoothed out, deepening into something less loyal, less desperate-to-please. It sounded far more dangerous than One had expected, even with Gabriella's old reports on the elves. 

"Four," One said again, trying to draw Four's gaze from where it lingered on Zero.

Four shook her head slightly, as if just coming to her senses, and she offered a thin ghost of a smile to One.

"Preparations—” Four began, wetting her lips. Her hair was newly brushed, clothes pressed and carrying the scent of soap. Could the morning have already come? “We’re beginning soon and we _need_ you. And… you don't need to be alone with that..." Four's mouth twisted, her eyes flickering back to Zero for just a moment, "Monster, either."

"Oh, this is rich," Zero cut in before One could think on how to respond, sounding almost delighted with Four's sudden appearance in the cells. "Still mad about the knee, Four? Gonna be hard to beat your subjects into obedience like that, huh? My heart bleeds for you, it really does."

“Silence, Zero,” One warned, not taking her eyes off Four. “I was very clear about the keep, Four. You should have waited outside.”

Four's song twisted, seeming defiant beneath her skeleton control of it, and she fidgeted, not seeming to have the strength to meet One's eyes. 

"All these rules have me thinking you're her mother now, One. Not her sister." Zero's words were vicious, meant to injure, to divide and conquer, and from the look of mounting anger in Four's eyes, it was working. "I'm not gonna touch those implications with a ten foot pole."

Four's face had flushed at Zero's suggestion, and despite One's warning, she staggered forward a step or so, her teeth bared in fruitless, helpless frustration as her bad knee nearly buckled beneath her. "Shut up! What do you know, anyway?" 

Zero laughed, a harsh and ugly sound. "I sure as fuck know more than _you._ You should have brought the little shitlord down earlier, One. I like seeing my handiwork."

One's mouth tightened, a headache born more of weariness than anything forming behind her eyes. Four was not to be here, where she could continue to be victimised by a madwoman. 

"That's enough, Zero," One snapped, her words like ice. It served her needs well enough, and her sister's vicious gaze instead turned on her.

Zero's teeth bared, a snarl and a grin both, as she said, "And _you._ You still think I take orders from _you_?"

Four bristled, even if she still had to lean heavily on her crutch and her forehead gleamed with sweat in the torchlight. "You don't have the right to talk to her! She—"

" _Enough_ ," One cut in, song filtering through even her iron control to fill her voice with it. Her hands clenched at her sides, and perhaps she was giving Zero too much, but it was long past time she took back control. "Both of you will hold your tongues, or—"

One caught herself, her song trembling along the edges as she reigned herself in. It was getting to be too much: the sleepless nights, the endless questions— _Zero._

But even without finishing her threat, she’d finally gotten both Zero and Four’s attention. There was silence in the cells, just the heady swirl of song between the three of them and the pounding of One's own heart in her ears. Four was staring at her, wide-eyed, her lips pressed in a thin, hurt line. Behind her, One heard Zero's chains shift, followed by a quiet huff of laughter.

"Nice temper, One," Zero said, her words nothing more than a sneer. "Maybe you should trot it out more often."

Lips flattening, One sent Zero a quelling look over her shoulder, willing her to be be silent for once. Her lack of focus on Four, however, only encouraged her usually obedient, deferential sister to speak her mind once again. 

"I used to look up to you, Zero. I used to care what happened to you!" Four ignored One's sharp look, her lips parting in a tremulous, almost hungry smile. "Now, you're as good as dead and I couldn't be happier—"

" _I used to look up to you, Zero,_ " Zero cut in, her voice pitched high in a mockery of Four's. " _But then again, with my head so far up One's ass, I haven't seen daylight in years so I guess I'm completely full of shit._ "

Four's smile transformed into a snarl in an instant, her face flushing crimson and her voice climbing an octave, trembling with song as she spat, "Do not _mock_ me."

" _Do not mock me, I can dish it but I can't take it._ " Zero's eyes narrowed then, dropping the mimicry as she said, "Go fuck your disciple already. _God._ I can't stand virgins."

Four's expression was one of nothing but loathing, and she clutched at the bars of Zero's cell, her hands only barely hesitating over the lock. If Zero said anything further, Four would try to rip her apart, One's words be damned. 

One pressed her fingertips to her temples, forcing her own anger down and aside and praying for the strength to deal with the two of them. The whole conversation had been a disaster from the start, and it needed to stop— _now._

"Four," One said, her voice quiet, before Four could galvanise herself into taking action against Zero. "You're correct."

Four hesitated, looking over her shoulder at One, her anger and hatred instead fading into confusion. "I... I am?"

One closed the distance between them, laying her hand on Four's shoulder. She felt the way Four's pulse spiked at the touch, the way her song picked up. Her face had flushed hot, but it wasn't in anger, not this time. One brushed her gloved thumb along the edge of Four's jaw, disarming her sister in the only way she knew how.

Four's eyes fluttered closed for a moment, her breath ragged as she pressed her hand against the back of One's. The anger slowly drained from her, toxins from an infected wound until only rawness remained. 

"Find Turric and tell her to begin preparations to move Zero," One told her, but only when she was certain Four could listen. "It is time we ended things."

Four swallowed thickly, opening her eyes to glance sidelong at where Zero had remained suspiciously silent in her cell. 

"Are... Are you certain you'll be fine here?" Four asked, her voice growing a little hotter then. "With _her_?"

One leaned up, pressing her lips in a lingering kiss to Four's temple. "Thank you. I will watch her until Turric arrives, and then I'll join you outside."

Four nodded stiffly, her cheeks still crimson, but she didn't look back as she hobbled off and away from the dungeons. One let herself exhale slowly, relieved that she had averted disaster. Behind her, she heard Zero's chains clink as she shifted.

"Well _that_ was fucked up," Zero said, and maybe the twist in her voice was anger, sick amusement—or both. "You really love the whole control thing, don't you? You wanted me to talk before, and you wanted to leash your little monster just now. Never thought it of _you_."

"And now I want for you to be quiet," One told her, her voice low and wearied, not even looking at her. 

Zero didn't seem to care, simply continuing as though she'd not spoken at all. "I'm more surprised she actually did as she was told. Maybe the little shitlord _does_ care. In her own way."

That earned her a narrow look, equal parts disgust and exasperation. " _She_ is my sister. Did you expect her to renege as you have?"

Zero only shrugged her good shoulder, her smile vicious and knowing in the torchlight. "I doubt she could, not with the knots you’ve twisted her in. It's funny—it _was_ always you, wasn't it?"

“Is that supposed to mean something?” Loath as she was to give Zero anything, One still couldn’t keep the sour note from her question.

Zero merely shrugged, turning her back on the bars of her cell—and One. 

Brows dipping, One began towards the door to the dungeon, her strides long and quick. Turric would arrive soon and One would be free to prepare with the rest of her sisters for the trial before them. 

At the threshold, she paused, her gaze steely and set. “Have it your way, Zero. Four _is_ correct. You scarcely matter now."

*

Cathedral City had not seen so much activity since the warlords had fallen nearly one year prior. 

One couldn’t recall sanctioning so many spectators to the trial, but neither could she send them all away now. Crowds gathered through the plaza and lined the pathway to the old court block on the eastern half of the keep, their eyes hungry for blood, vengeance. It wasn’t justice they wanted done today, but that was what One would give them, her shoulders aching from the weight of expectations piled upon her.

She’d had little time to right herself before the trial, Five fixing her with an unhappy frown upon her return from the keep. The crowds had watched her comings and goings, eager, and she knew there would be no time for rest. A bath and a small meal had been all she could manage, her stomach roiling with sickness. 

The only thing to see her through the hour was the knowledge that with this, Zero would plague them no more.

Horses had been prepared, mostly in accordance with Four’s wishes, but One made no complaint. The walk from the western overlook to the court block was almost two miles, and her sister hobbled more than she walked even with a week to rest.

The thrum of life, of shifting crowds and conflicting smells, was enough to make One cross-eyed with pain as she mounted, but Five pulled her horse in close, her sideways gaze tracing along One like a tender caress. The headache threatening her sanity ebbed at the notes of Five’s song, cool relief, and soon the two of them were joined by the rest of their sisters, their songs all humming in harmony to make the pain bearable. 

As Five was often wont to claim, the people really did view the Intoners as gods, no matter what side of the war they'd been on. 

For one of their own—even one as relatively unknown to most people as Zero had been—to be put on trial for her crimes against humanity was of national interest, and people had come from as far away as the Land of Mountains to watch the proceedings. 

They followed the five of them closely, and One was thankful Turric had already seen Zero moved to the court block. A crowd like this was boiling pitch; it would only take a single spark to ignite the whole lot, and even if she was an Intoner, Zero would still feel the pain of being ripped apart over and over again, each wound healing as soon as it was inflicted. 

A part of her wondered if she deserved as much for her crimes, but it was silenced swiftly, One’s brows knitted with focus, the bags beneath her eyes dark and telling.

Casting a sidelong look at her sisters, One watched them soak up the attention of the crowds, enjoying the peace they'd fought so hard for. At her right hand, Five offered winks to the adoring crowds when she was not catching One’s gaze with flashes of teeth, and to her left, Two smiled and waved with both hands, practically jubilant even now. One was certain Three had dozed off in the saddle, her horse veering too closely to Four’s, whose expression looked frozen and pained, too much effort put into looking regal.

Without Zero here to twist her into knots, One might have felt at ease but for the court block approaching on the horizon. It was a reminder of what was to come after, of the reprieve she might finally be afforded from the worry, the planning. Seeing her sisters unburdened, _happy_ was all the cause she needed to soldier on, to finish this, finish Zero.

With a nod to her sisters, One led the way inside the vast courtroom to where Zero awaited their judgement. 

The courtroom had been swept and cleaned at One’s direction, the pillars of marble scrubbed until they shone. A headblock had been found in place of a stand upon the platform where Zero was to make her defense, but Turric had seen it thrown out, a podium brought in its place. One had ordered it turned to firewood, a remnant of another time when justice was doled upon the kneeling and already condemned. 

One’s mouth tightened. There could be no doubt of Zero’s guilt, her eventual conviction, the execution she herself would ordain. Truth be told, the podium was a formality, a shred of dignity spared upon a creature who deserved nothing.

Five’s cutting smile came to her then, the way she’d laughed at the word _justice._

Trying to push the memory from her thoughts, she dismounted, soldiers coming to take their horses. Four had to be helped from the saddle by Two, a terrible blush warming her cheeks in front of so many, but there was no time to settle her now. They stepped inside together, a united front, and met the sight of an open courtroom, empty save Turric—and _Zero._

“My lady,” she said, bowing deeply as One approached, backed by her sisters on each side.

One glanced beyond Turric to where Zero had already been chained in the docks, now clean of dried blood and grime, dressed in new whites. The stub of her missing arm had been bound in fresh linens, wrapped tightly to lie safely against her torso. Her remaining hand had been twisted and bound behind her back with the dragonbone chains One had had the city blacksmiths fashion, linked instead to a brace sitting about her hips. 

Despite her missing arm and her captivity, Zero's shoulders were straight and her expression aloof, sending a chill down One's spine. For once, she looked every inch the Intoner One had spent so long fearing and vowing to defeat. 

Zero caught her eye with a wickedly cruel smile, but One’s voice came hard and steady, meeting her gaze, “Thank you, Turric. Let us begin.”

There were no benches within, but the great windows along the building had been thrown open, a cool gusting breeze slipping through. One could see the people outside straining to watch, straining to hear even a little of what was being said. Dozens of eyes followed as the five of them filed into the stand across from Zero, One set between Five and Two.

Once the day was done with, One reassured herself, looking out over the masses of people beyond the courtroom and the sisters safely at her side, even the staunchest rebel would be unable to doubt the Intoners or their commitment to the greater good of the world. 

Even when it concerned the actions of one of their own. 

Using that thought to spur her on, One looked to her address, a formal declaration of their intentions to try the traitor Zero for her crimes against the world. It had been written out weeks ago, her hand steady and precise. Now the words seemed foreign, the taste of them like sand in her mouth, grating. 

Then, it had been so easy to imagine. 

Cathedral City had no trials to its name. When the Intoners took command, there had been nothing but bones and the remnants of what used to be the magical capital of the world. With the Mercurial Gate sealed and the warlords turned to bloody chunks in its aftermath, there had been no one to hold court over. 

The people came later, occupation cemented when One’s army arrived, headed by Turric. Yet with only her most devout followers to fill the empty ruins of Cathedral City, there had been little need for trials. 

Those had been held elsewhere, her sisters hunting down the rebels as One toiled in her library, Zero lingering over her thoughts like a miasma. 

This was supposed to be history, the first—and only—trial Cathedral City would ever see. Only now it seemed useless, a formality set over an execution. Three’s laughter came to her: _what are laws to gods?_

Clearing her throat, One began, “On the fifth day of the—”

"And so the farce begins.” Zero yawned, looking bored enough even with the faint jeers of men and women from outside. She cracked her neck. “Hurry the fuck up, would you? I haven’t got all day.”

 _A farce._ One's mouth tightened, and she did not shy from Zero’s edged gaze.

Most cutting of all, Zero’s mockery sparked something like fury in her chest. She’d laughed at One’s intentions as well, at One’s justice. She leaned forward at the stand, pushing aside the papers before her. 

“Fine.” Her voice rang out through the courtroom, hard and unforgiving. Five fixed her with a sideways look, frowning, but One paid her no mind, refusing to give to Zero, to turn away. “We’ll proceed to the accounts of your crimes.”

Something caught Zero’s expression, as though she hadn’t expected that. _Good,_ One thought. _See how far you have pushed me, traitor._

As expected, Zero did not speak up in her defence, her expression growing stony as the session began. Her crimes were as extensive as they were diverse, following a bloody trail from the Land of Seas to the Land of Forests and back again. One did not skip a single one, naming each person slain, each heinous act. If guilt or remorse could not be pulled from Zero, then the families would at least know their loved ones had not been forgotten. 

Surprise quickly faded to boredom as the list wore on, Zero rolling her eyes. The only true reaction One could draw from her was a tightening of her jaw when Michael’s bloody sacrifice came to the fore—but even that she smoothed away with another vicious grin.

When all had been read aloud, there was only the matter of Zero’s defense—not that One entertained the idea she might make one. "For the sixty counts of aggravated burglary, twenty-five counts of theft, fifty-eight counts of murder—"

Zero's laugh was harsh and loud, cutting One off as effectively as if she'd been able to use song. "Only fifty-eight? You're selling me short, sister." 

She spat to the side, apparently amused by her own wit, tilting her head back in a blatant challenge to authority, yet One’s response was only a narrowing of her eyes. “You are _not_ my sister. Have you anything to say in your defense, traitor?”

Silence swallowed the room for a moment. Twice today she had caught Zero unawares, yet this time only unabashed laughter answered her. One might have cared if she did not recognize this as the final, desperate throes of a vile creature condemned to die, yet from somewhere behind her, One felt a spike of interest from Five, Three, Four—gods help her, even _Two._

_No more._

“Then we are through here.”

It cost her nothing at all to order Zero to die by Gabriel's fire in three days, meeting that furious gaze with calm and poise even as the people outside sent up a rowdy cheer. No longer did Zero find the proceedings a source of amusement, it seemed. 

“You think you’re doing the good work, don’t you?” Zero did not lower her gaze from One's as she was unchained from the dock, as she was led away through the crowds of jeering onlookers, the families of those she'd killed. “You’re fucking blind, One.”

One turned her back on Zero, looking instead to her sisters. Let her stew on her upcoming death, let her promise retribution and calamity—One didn’t care. 

*

Sleep came as soon as they returned to the overlook, Five brushing her fingers over the back of One’s gauntlets as they made their way to their quarters. She should have worried for Four, had Turric post watches on Three, asked after Two, whose song had waivered so tumultuously as Zero had been led away, but the trial had drained everything from her. She leaned into Five as they ascended twin staircases, and had she a shred less pride, she might have asked to be carried. 

There was no ceremony to it. One kicked off her boots and dropped her shawl onto the floor, practically falling into the bed the moment the door closed behind her. It was heavenly, a weightlessness that threatened to swallow her up as soon as she closed her eyes; and she could not, _would_ not resist it. 

Somewhere far off, she felt Five slide into bed behind her. Surely she couldn’t be tired. It was scarcely evening, and Five kept hours which nearly mirrored One’s, save only for the long afternoon naps her sister often indulged in.

Yet warm breath against her neck confirmed Five meant to stay. 

“Thank you,” One murmured, already halfway gone. 

Sure arms pulled her close, wrapping her in warmth. “She’ll be dead soon, sister. I have you.”

Five nearly sounded relieved, yet for the life of her One could not understand why. She lacked all capacity then, drifting into a dreamless slumber. It was born more of necessity than a clear mind, her body pushed to its utmost limits, weak from overexertion and two weeks ignoring its needs. 

Yet pressed to Five, even that did not last, colors dancing behind her lids until Bartas brandished his magic at her once more. They swirled through their battle, yet instead of Zero, this time it was her sisters who came to her aid, the black mass which had threatened to consume them all safely locked behind the Mercurial Gate. The five of them cut him to ribbons, his blood coloring everything in red until the battle faded.

Images flitted by: the runes of the keep, glowing faintly, ever the reminder of what existed here; the inside of Four’s chambers, hearth crackling as One worked her fingers through her sister’s hair; the Land of Sands, heat rising from the dunes in waves. 

Gabriella danced through her dreams, scales a glossy black, violet polished to shine. She made no habit of smiling, but the soft skin around her eyes wrinkled when she enjoyed something, her teeth snapping together in delight, a barb prepared should anyone comment.

Yet even she passed, the yearning in One’s chest stirring her connection to Gabriel even in dreams. It threatened to pull her back to consciousness, but the press of lips to her shoulder conjured different visions, the slick heat of a mouth, the reverent brush of fingers. It made her ache from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. 

Perhaps that was what finally pulled her from her dreams, a pang of loss coupled with the insistent murmur of voices as the edge of her hearing. She awakened gradually, her mind struggling to catch up with her eyes, blinking at the long cold ashes in the hearth and the dark which seemed to dance and shift. 

Behind her, the bed was still warm, the shape of Five’s body pressed into the mattress, but of her sister herself there was no sign. 

“ _Five_?” Her voice was ragged, her throat parched. How long had she slept? She struggled against the duvet, pulled to her neck in the night, but her body ached to sleep again, limbs numb and weak. If not for a spike of worry, she might have been inclined to allow it, but not now. “Sister?”

Sitting up, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, dizziness fogging her senses. Even listening carefully, she couldn’t pick out the voices which she’d awoken to, but as ever, the soft thrum of her sister’s song crept across her skin in a whisper, the notes muted unusually. As if Five was trying to conceal herself.

To throw her legs over the side of the bed and pull herself from the sheets took more than One might have ever imagined, but the quickening of Five’s song drew her on. She pulled open the door to the corridor outside and strained to see against the blaze of the torches, her eyes too slow adjusting. 

“My lady,” came Turric’s voice, strained and small. 

Five pulled away, her features falling flat, shoulders relaxing. She turned to face One completely, smiling too sweetly to be anything but forced. “Oh, dear sister. And here I’d hoped not to wake you.”

One didn’t miss the twitch of her lips, the way her eyes darted back toward Turric, who was pressed to the opposite wall, her face pale and sweating. She looked wide-eyed between Five and One; remembrance overtook her before One’s mind could catch up, and she pushed herself off the wall, bowing low. 

“Turric?” One looked between them, brow furrowed. “Is there something—”

“Nothing so urgent as to need you now,” Five said, cutting her off. “I was just telling your lieutenant such.”

The look Five shot Turric was sharp and dangerous, and One didn’t miss the way Turric averted her gaze, eyes dropping to floor, cowed. 

Pursing her lips, One shook her head, trying again, “Turric wouldn’t disturb me so late for a trifle.”

Five took one look at the way Turric bunched her face in consideration and then stepped towards One, sliding her fingers along the line of her jaw and into her hair. The press of her thumbs to One’s temples turned her knees to jelly, a soft sound of appreciation slipping from her lips as Five massaged her tenderly. “Trust your sister, One. You’ve not rested nearly enough,” she breathed, warm against One’s ear as she pulled her to her chest. “This can wait until morning.”

One sunk into Five, exhaustion weighing her down until her limbs felt like thick chains, her sister’s voice and song and touch offering the suggestion of relief—if only she would leave whatever Turric brought until the morning. 

To melt into Five… She breathed deep of her sister’s skin, bracketing her hips with her hands. Her sister’s touch strayed, slipping back into her hair to comb it into place, a kiss pressed to the sigil on her forehead. “Turric?”

“My lady… There are reports… The keep—Zero is…”

“ _Contained_ ,” Five finished for her, touch intoxicating. “And therefore unimportant.”

Zero’s name called upon sickness, One’s jaw tensing as her stomach flipped, wondering what new horror she was responsible for this time. She’d almost forgotten she still drew breath, her peace so absolute. Yet there was still her execution, no matter how swift it would be.

It took a long moment for One to reply. “Five,” she sighed, tilting her head up from her sister’s generous bosom. Eyes like molten gold bore into her own, and the longing there was plain to see. “I will be back as soon as she is dealt with.”

Displeasure twisted Five’s expression, lips curling back, fingers stilling. “You intend to leave me for a dead woman?”

“An hour, no more. I must be sure she isn’t a threat.”

Her amber eyes narrowed. “You tread the line between precaution and obsession rather carelessly, sister.”

One gave her a faint smile. “She’ll be dead soon, Five. What is there to fear?”

Five released her without any lingering touches, her hair swaying behind her as she turned her back on One and Turric and stalked off, her song humming sharply. “I’ve spent too much time in this room anyway. If you insist, I’ll find company elsewhere.”

Alone with Turric, One felt her weariness keenly, all of the air sucked from her by Five’s quick withdrawal. The sooner she was finished, the sooner she might return and smooth things over with her body against Five’s, blessed sleep enveloping them both. 

“How long have I slept, Turric?” One asked, watching with no small amount of yearning as Five turned down another corridor. 

“Two days, my lady. Lady Five said she would wake you for the execution and nothing else.”

Guilt rose in One's throat. Five had stayed with her as she slept? If Turric noticed the sag of her shoulders, she made no comment, merely watching as One drew a deep breath and then slipped into her quarters to secure her boots and shawl. 

“Lead on,” she said when she had finished, and Turric did with a nod.

Silence descended between them, One too exhausted to speak. She had to focus to steel herself, already knowing Zero would exploit any weakness she could perceive. She would have to put aside Five and the guilt which hounded her. The walk from the overlook to the keep gave her ample time, and when they finally reached the keep, she could feel the tremble of song just below the stones, her mind clear. 

“I see,” she said. Turric fingered the hilt of her sword, jaw tight, but One touched her shoulder. “Open the vault and bring me something to encourage the traitor to still her tongue until morning.”

A beat passed. “More restraints or...?”

“Chains. No weapons, Turric.”

Turric nodded. She bowed and turned from the keep, crossing the plaza with quick strides until she disappeared down the stairs. 

Once Turric was gone, One allowed herself to sigh. Perhaps now Zero was finally understanding her position—that it was over, that she would die. Shaking her head, she conceded it had been too much to hope that Zero would meet her end peacefully. 

The sound of Zero’s fractured song came again, the stone shaking, and this time, One could pick out her name among the chaotic notes, a beckons which brokered no arguments. Zero demanded much of her after taking so much, but then, it had always been this way.

Still, Zero would bring the keep down if she didn’t stop, and One would not see the knowledge it held lost to someone like her. She approached the keep with her back straight, hands clasped behind her back, a pillar of strength.

With the keep’s runes glowing faintly to light her way, One took the steps to the dungeon, her song even and orderly even as Zero’s rampaged around her, too damaged and contained to break anything—yet. 

“Zero,” she said, entering the lit dungeon. Her tone was low, tinged with just a bit of song, but she knew Zero would hear her. “There is more dragonbone if needs—”

She paused, blinking in the torchlight. Zero was on her feet, a stark change from every other time One had paid her visit. That was why the light so easily reached her, falling across delicate pink petals sprouting from her eye socket. 

One froze, an alarmed spike of song settling in her throat, but her voice was dangerously flat as she demanded, “What is this?”

Zero bared her teeth, her breath ragged as she pressed her hand to her face. Her fingertips lightly brushed at the pink petals, strangely hesitant, before recoiling as though burned. 

"Shit," she breathed, before looking up again, her song spiking sharp and desperate, the onslaught of it almost enough to hide the way it trembled. "The _flower_ , One. Don't tell me you don't fucking recognise it!"

The name of it, spoken aloud, jolted something in One's mind. She couldn't seem to recall how to breathe for the sudden way fear had constricted her chest. The black mass of the Mercurial Gate flashed through her mind, but not even that choked her so much as the thing growing from Zero’s eye. Her hands fisted at her sides, empty and wanting for her chakram, a blade, _anything_ to cut away the pestilence before it could spread.

“I recognize it,” One managed, her thoughts flickering back to the mentions of dragons and the flower she'd read of the night she'd spoken with Three. It felt like so long ago, now. Texts described the flower as a parasite which beget destruction wherever it appeared. Even the oldest tomes, the ones she could scarcely understand for age and a different language, named it evil, abhorrent. “You brought it _here_? To Cathedral City?”

How hadn’t she noticed it before? Something like that? Zero had snuck it in right under her nose. One’s head began to throb, a low buzz at the base of her skull as she struggled to recollect her thoughts.

She pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead, breathing hard. Of all the outcomes… Had this been Zero’s failsafe? “You would bring ruin upon us all!”

"You don't _get it_! You useless idiot!" Zero snarled, surging forward until her dragonbone chains went taut, until the brackets binding her to the wall began to groan. She was so close that One could feel the drag of her breath on her skin, feel the chaotic notes of her song in her bones. "It's not just _me_. You, the Intoners... We're all infected by the goddamn thing! Can't you feel it?"

“ _You go too far_.” One's voice cracked. 

She had to do something. If the flower was here then—then she would not await Zero's scheduled execution. She moved in on the cell, wrenching open the door, and marched into the darkness. It smelled of mold and filth and bodies, dizzying against her extreme senses, but she steeled herself against it, teeth clenched, and seized Zero by her shoulder, where the stub of her arm had been wrapped up tight against her torso. One heard her sister hiss at the rough grasp, but her mind was elsewhere, whirling through everything she knew, weighing her every option. 

How long did she have? How did the flower grow, consume? The texts mentioned it spreading, destroying everything, but there were no solid accounts of _how._ All she knew was that only a dragon could kill it.

Gabriel’s heartbeat stuttered through her mind, and she called for him, the sensation of wind beneath his wings sudden and dizzying. He would finish this—finish Zero and her flower and whatever malice she intended. Directing him toward the plaza outside the keep, she blinked, coming back to Zero, to herself.

“We end this now, Zero," One forced out, and the song trembled in every syllable, daring her to defy her now. 

A sharp burst of song separated the bracket from where Zero had loosened it from the stone in her endless wrath, for there was no longer any time left to them. One pulled Zero bodily from the cell, her thoughts racing faster than she could process. Gabriel would have to destroy it—destroy her. 

Zero snarled down into One's face, trying to tear away from One’s solid grip. One gave her nothing, holding tight—Zero would not escape her this time—and spots of red began to dot her arm’s wrappings.

"Go ahead, kill me," Zero spat, her voice ragged with pain, harsh with desperation. "I've long made my peace with it. But here's a tip, _One._ You'd better be goddamn ready to do just the same to your beloved little sisters, or they'll eat you alive."

One stiffened against Zero, becoming like stone, and with an iron grasp, she hauled her sister from the cell. 

“Our sisters will never follow your path, Zero," One told her sister. To think she might have once offered this creature mercy was galling. "This ends with _you_.”

"They are not going to have a goddamn _choice_." Zero's teeth bared, more of a rabid dog than ever, the soft, delicate petals of a monster sprouting from her eye. "Don't you fucking bury your head in the sand, One! It doesn't care about them—in fact, it probably would like them better if you'd all remained—"

Zero cut off then, cursing, as One took hold of her dragonbone chains, heedless of the way her song faltered and died at the contact. It was no matter. If Zero would not come willingly, then One would drag her kicking and screaming to Gabriel’s flames—anything to cleanse Cathedral City of her machinations. 

"We're nothing but ticking time bombs, One. All it'll take is just one of us to break and give in, and it'll be lights out for the world you claim you love so much!" Zero kept talking, her words coming too fast. Why was she always _talking_ when One wished for nothing more than her silence? "How much did you block out the last time we fucking fought? _The flower_ revived your sisters!"

One’s stride faltered, and she turned back on Zero, snapping, “Lies! No dragon struck them down. It was only a matter of time before they healed!”

Her stomach churned at the memory of the black mass which had flowed from the gate, engulfing the city and her sisters both. Magic pushed to the limits, she had watched from the ground as it blossomed, petals opening as her sisters dangled from it like buds. That they had withstood that when all else fell—that _she_ had withstood what even Gabriella couldn’t touch—it was proof of their vitality, the song’s strength. It had led them to overturning the warlords, left the world in their hands to be built anew. 

“We fought the abomination from the Mercurial Gate—we drove it back!” One snarled, so close she could see the specks of red along the petals in the dim glow of the keep’s runes. 

“Your sisters danced like puppets until _I_ stopped it!” Zero set her jaw and advanced a step on One, tall and gaunt and angled with shadows. “Stop pretending you don’t know I’m right, One! You’re a self-righteous martyr, but you aren’t stupid. Open your fucking eyes—”

From above, the weight of Gabriel landing in the plaza shook the entire keep, dust dislodging and falling in clouds. One could feel his flames just behind her teeth as if they were her own, the heat leaving her dry-mouthed and sweating. 

_Words._ What good had words ever been against Zero? It was far too late for them. One steeled herself, encouraged by Gabriel’s proximity; she would snuff out this threat before it spread, before it consumed everything One had worked so hard to create. Her brows turned downward, and she took Zero by the arm, yanking her along behind her. 

Zero cursed her as they descended from the servant’s wing, tripping and pulling back feebly against One’s iron grip. When Bartas had come for them both, Zero had been stronger, her blows like cannon-fire against One’s defensive parries. One's arms had trembled with the force of them, but now Zero couldn’t resist, her body weak from her confinement and the loss of her arm. 

_Good,_ One thought, her mouth set in a grim line. _Perhaps she will die without a fight._

“One! One, you fucking idiot! You can’t ignore this! The flower isn’t going to stop just because you kill me! It’ll use one of your precious shithead sisters—even _you_.”

Images of her sisters came to her, a pang of fear among the fury, but One wouldn’t be swayed. Zero was vile, a liar and a killer. _Traitor._ The keep opened up before them, the plaza dark, illuminated only by the light of the half-moon overhead and the licks of flame which came with Gabriel’s breath, the only sign he lived at all. 

“ _Fuck._ ” Zero paled and sharpened, her good eye trained on Gabriel’s form. “You’re going to ruin this world, One! You and your fucking sisters.”

“Not the world, Zero. Only _you_.”

Zero surged forward, digging her nails into One’s bicep, yanking her back and forcing her to meet her gaze. "What merry horrors have they committed lately? You cover up their bullshit, One. You can't help it! Can't you goddamn see something is very wrong with Three? With _Four_?" Zero's breath was laboured, her voice dropping. "How long before you can no longer keep your monsters leashed?"

Outrage made her song quiver, the notes fraying along the edges, and One stared openly, teeth bared as fangs in a snarl. Even now she felt Zero’s judgement keenly, justifications leaping into her throat. They tasted like ash, the immediate urge to defend herself overtaking her. It chafed, burned that after everything she _still—_

“Be _quiet_!” The plaza grew brighter for a moment, a gout of flame rumbling in Gabriel’s throat like a growl. “I was a fool not to kill you at once!”

Zero laughed, dry, rough and humorless. “I hope you’re ready to put them down just as easily when they snap—and they will, One.”

“Do not speak of them!”

Her song rattled the stone, but Zero only grit her teeth against it, stiffening as Gabriel lumbered forward, tail lashing behind him. One could feel her own anger in him, mirrored back at her until it threatened to overflow. His approach sparked something desperate in Zero, who looked to him and then seized One by the front of her shawl with her only good arm. 

“You listen and you listen good, One!” Zero snarled, pulling her up and off balance, her arm trembling from the strain. Sweat dotted her face. “Go ahead and kill me now, but when your sisters end up just like me, you better off them too or this world is fucking _gone._ You can’t save them, One. You can’t fucking spare them! It’s us or everyone else on this goddamn planet!”

Song spiking in her throat, she met Zero eye to eye, her lips pulling back. “You’re _lying_!”

“Why the fuck do you think I was going to kill you? All of us have to die!”

“They are my _sisters_!”

“And so am I! Or is that something else you’re trying desperately to forget?” 

Zero shook her, but her strength waned, One’s heels brushing the ground once more. She broke from Zero at once, seeing red, tasting fire and death on her tongue. Behind her, Gabriel’s claws scored the flagstones.

“Use your goddamn daemon. Just remember if you don’t, it won’t stick.” Zero glanced up at him, swallowing thickly. “Think you can do it, One?”

Gabriel’s breath blew hot against her neck, and she could feel him right behind her, backing her like a storm. She saw him reflected in Zero’s eyes, her face as white as her dress, but Zero didn’t move, didn’t run. She only looked down at One and grimaced. 

“We were doomed from the start.” She licked her lips. “You just didn’t fucking know it.”

It was impossible not to stare, freezing One's rage in its path. She’d seen her sister angry before, seen her features twisted so she was more kin to demons than Intoners. Desperate—she’d even seen her desperate. But never resigned. _Never._

Her mind whirred, trying to make sense of it all between the two of them, Gabriel waiting to make ashes of Zero. It would take merely a thought. Her desire would move the hulking body even pain and threat of death could not. He existed for her, existed for this, yet now that the time had come, One wasn’t _sure._

“How would you know? _When_ —?” Her mind whirred, too many questions clamouring for her attention now. The black mass? If that had been a manifestation of the flower, had it been during their battle when Zero had come to host it? Yet they’d all been exposed to it, her sisters, even _One—_

If it had been Gabriella—if there was anything left of her to be scraped from inside of the shell that was Gabriel—One might have begged her counsel. She needed to know Zero was lying, needed to know she could kill her and still return to Five, bury herself against her and sleep easy. But her doubts...

“You have betrayed _everything,_ Zero, and now you claim it was for just cause? That we Intoners carry that—” She looked at Zero’s flower, glaring. “Monster as you do? This— _You_ are a poison to this world, Zero. Why should I believe _anything_ you say?”

“Because you know I’m right.” Zero's gaze tore through One’s hopes, her prayers. “Because I was there when it all started. None of us would be here right now if it weren’t for this fucking flower!”

One took Zero by the wrist, fingers like steel around her flesh. Their songs rang together in discord, Zero’s too fast, One’s too unstable. Still, she yanked Zero closer, tilting her head up to lock eyes with her, her mouth a thin line of fury. 

“ _How_?” she bit, her song riotous, angry. It filled her veins, making her itch to just end it. “How would you know?”

Surprise arrested Zero's features, yet it hardened into ire before One could blink. “Now you’re interested? Finally got it through your—”

“ _Zero_!”

“Lady Caerula!” Zero snapped, apparently done with the games. “You remember that particular monster, don’t you?”

One’s eyes narrowed even as her hands shook. Her restraint was edge thin, and Zero walked it carelessly. “Dead and burned, her accomplices executed. Do you expect me to believe _she_ did all this?”

"Funny you should mention _execution_." Zero closed her eye for a moment, her mouth twisting, and it has hard to look away from the flower, the light from Gabriel's fire casting it in stark relief. When she finally looked back to One, she smiled, the expression crooked and humourless. "June, 997. Lady Caerula's underlings held an execution for a girl named Rose and a few others. You'll find your _proof_ there."

“You want me to wait? No. I won’t play your games, Zero. Tell me now, or you will _burn_.”

Zero offered a mockery of a smile, the expression loathsome, infuriating. “You don’t believe a word I say as it is.”

“And perhaps I shouldn’t… I know I shouldn’t—”

“But here we fucking are.”

It could well be a trick, One knew. Zero was a desperate, conniving creature, yet even still…

“Gabriel,” One whispered, her voice low and deadly. 

Behind her, his teeth snapped together, and he reared back, standing at full height until his shadow blocked even the moon’s light. Fear danced in Zero’s eyes, but One held her in place, her expression stony, giving nothing. Gabriel’s chains rattled, his wings spread, and then he was gone, the gust that followed his leap threatening to topple them both. It whipped at One’s hair, pushed her closer to Zero, stole all the air from her lungs, but she didn’t look away, didn’t take her eyes off Zero for even a moment. 

Zero’s good eye followed her executioner’s retreat against the blackened sky, but the weight of One’s consideration finally drew her back, breathless and reeling. 

“...You’re something else.” There was no admiration to Zero's words, only disbelief. 

“And you are on borrowed time, Zero.” She was all menace, all bitterness. “If this is a ploy, I will not be merciful.”

Zero laughed, humorless, hopeless. “Don’t I know it.”

There was no victory to Zero, nothing but exhaustion in the sag of her shoulders, the heave of her chest. Her arm bled, drops of it staining the side of her dress, the stone beneath them both. She looked ready to drop, only held upright by her own stubborn nature—yet still, it _rankled._

Perhaps it was the flower, its petals quivering in the pale light, or perhaps One’s roiling gut was the symptom of something more. She bit back a growl of her own, thoughts cycling, vicious, dark. If she believed Zero, if she even considered… Two, Three, Four, even _Five…_ They weighed against the world, their lives against the men and women One had liberated. 

Turric’s face swam before her, and she finally released Zero, looking away and rubbing her eyes. She would be back soon… Chains. She would have chains. 

“You are still my prisoner.” One’s voice was barely more than a rasp. “I don’t trust you.”

Zero gave an edged smile. “That’s the smartest fucking thing you’ve ever said.”

Shoving her brokered little resistance; perhaps Zero could feel the tension in her song, the threat of what it would mean should she defy One's will now. After a moment of indignation, Zero obeyed, turned on the keep, the runes shifting along the walls casting her in ethereal greens and warm yellows. 

More than ever, Zero was dangerous. One could afford to give her nothing. With the flower in play, she was a contagion, a writhing parasite who could infect those who foolishly trampled too close. 

One could be the only one to chance it.

Turning from Zero, she looked out over the plaza, her hands fists at her sides. Her sisters… Their presence here endangered them all. 

If she could protect them no other way, she would seek the truth in Zero’s words alone. Cathedral City had been their bastion, the seat of power of the Intoners, yet now One knew an empty keep would suit her better. It would take a word to Turric, no more, and her sisters would be gone and a raven sent ahead to the Land of Seas chasing Zero’s claims.

 _Send them away,_ she thought, gut twisting unbearably tight. _And keep them safe._

Truly what choice did she have?

She turned from the plaza, staring down into the mouth of the keep, Zero’s footsteps echoing up like a phantom’s. To confront Zero alone, to confront the flower alone… It was safer. For all of them. 

With that in mind, One followed Zero down into the dim stairwell of the keep, away from the coming dawn and her sisters, the doors grinding closed behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, shit truly starts to get real in Cathedral City.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for heavy emotional abuse and a lot of unhealthiness this time around. Enjoy the trainwreck that is this chapter, friends.

In the days following her confrontation with Zero, One holed herself away in the depths of the keep. She'd had no doubt that her abrupt dismissal of her sisters and the whiplash of her decision on Zero would sit with them poorly. Given the stakes, however, she could not risk taking the time to explain.

As it was, Turric's reports had hit her hard. The orders, delivered without so much as a chance for protest, had been met with hurt, incredulity—even wavering defiance and a brief moment where it almost seemed they’d attempt to force an audience.

Turric could not say what had finally defused the situation, but One was thankful she had not been there to see her sisters in such a state—over _her_. They lingered only until dusk, Five departing first with Three following her out. Four waited longer, surely hopeful One would change her mind, but even she left when the doors to the Keep remained closed. Finally, just before the sun set, word that Two had cleared Cathedral City reached One, and at last she knew she was alone.

With nothing but the relentless, distant chaos of Zero's song for company, it was hard not to recall the last time she'd seen Five, to dwell on the way her sister had turned her back on her and Turric both. Yet she couldn't allow even a kernel of bitter guilt to distract her—for the very sisters she'd hurt, she'd thrown herself into her work. Where before she'd needed to divide her time, splitting it between duty and comfort, now she was of singular purpose: poring over ancient texts and scrolls, searching desperately for anything that might hold the answers to her questions.

The shadows beneath her eyes became a part of her over the following week, and she spared time only to eat a little of what was brought to her; call her retainers for more candles, a book lost to the archives, or a bit of tea to keep her awake. The only times she managed sleep was when the words blurred and swam before her, when she could no longer find the energy to turn the page. She couldn’t spare the time to bathe save for when the smell of herself became too much for her, and it was only then when she felt even a little human.

Her retainers began talking, whispering about the delayed execution, muttering quietly of her own obsessions to rival Five's and Three's. Some offered that perhaps Zero had bewitched her and wondered if they ought to send for One’s sisters, but One always ensured those were the servants who did not return the following day. Better to let their suspicions fetter out than fester with her as their focal point.

When the letter with her promised records came though, she’d been expecting it all day. Running on just enough sleep to begin to dream dark and terrible dreams, One received it in the library and ripped it open at once.

Such was her rush that she could scarcely read the letter from Five’s disciple at all, her fingers trembling, before discarding it for the accompanying transcript of a trial and executions. It was as Zero had claimed—a woman, Rose, had indeed been sentenced to die by lashes for the crime of murder and burglary. Whatever other records or evidence Zero had been expecting, One could not be certain, for the verdict was the only mention of her. One read the lines over and over, looking for something, _anything_ , and finding nothing in the simple transcript. That this woman—Rose—existed proved nothing, and yet as brambles and thorns settled in her stomach, her eye caught on the words of the next curling page.

Five rebels, meant to be executed that same day for treason against Lady Caerula. _Treason_. Even having known the woman for but a few terrifying hours during life, One had little doubt that the extent of their charges had been inflated for show, more about making an example of malcontents than administering true justice. With a weary gaze, she glanced over their crimes—and their sentences—and paused, a familiar knot of pressure forming in her stomach.

Her lips thinning, One moved onto the grisly account of their executions, and at the end, the small afterthought which cataloged their bodies.

The deceased Lord Baas had kept similar records, and at once One blanched at the implications, her lips twisting downwards in disgust. Yet she persisted, reading each line with increasing dread as the archivist painted pictures of the executed rebels, fingers of ice squeezing her chest. Recognition came with the mention of Five’s snarls of gold hair, Four’s verdant eyes, Three’s slight frame, Two’s calloused hands—even her own pale skin, bleached hair.

She did not dare to breathe.

Over and over, One read the note, her head already spinning with the sheer implications buried in a simple record of those who should be dead. Heart thundering, her mouth dry, she scattered the papers across her desk, looking for something more, _anything_ to give her clarity on what she'd stumbled across so foolishly.

She needed proper answers, and now. She rose to her feet without a word, startling Turric, who’d brought her the correspondence and stood at her side awaiting her reply. Turric’s voice followed her from the library, but her words couldn’t catch One, already halfway to Zero’s cell.

One entered the dungeon, the chambers plunged back into darkness in the absence of visitors in need of candles. For her, it took just moments for her eyes to adjust, but still she lingered at the threshold, listening to the dangerous thrum of Zero's song, her tongue tied and twisted.

How in the world could she approach a topic of such... enormity? The sweat gathered, cold on her back in the oppressive dark of the dungeon, but her gaze was steady as it found Zero. Slouched against the iron bars of her cell and bound in dragonbone chain, her sister's mannerism might have seemed almost careless, almost lazy, her boredom a palpable thing. Her song betrayed her curiosity, though, circling One like a ravenous beast. She waited for weakness, preyed on the good intentions of others. She was the enemy One had always feared instinctively from the moment she'd awoken, the one she'd sworn to defeat for the sake of her sisters and the world.

Those first few moments of sentience were as fuzzy and intangible to her as the confrontation at the Gates, but if what she'd read in the records was true... Then those moments were not the start at all.

Zero had known it, all these years. She'd _known_ the truth, and now, she'd laid the path bare and trusted One would find it.

One didn't know what it all meant, only that it called everything into question. How could six people die and yet live? A part of One didn't want an answer, craved blissful ignorance instead of the dark abyss of doubt Zero's words had opened in her.

Wishful thinking, but it was not in her nature to turn away. For her sisters, for the _world_ , she had to try.

Slowly, One approached Zero's cell, shrinking in on herself until there was only the shaking of her hands, the crumple of paper in her desperate grasp. She looked down at it, her over-keen eyes picking out the lettering even in the darkness, and exhaled.

She'd start from the beginning, then. In a flat voice that betrayed nothing, she began to read.

Only when she had finished the account of the executions did she look up, her lips pressed tight together, the silence between herself and Zero thick and uncomfortable. What more could she say? Zero had promised her answers, and she was not going to back down until she got them.

After a moment, she heard a sigh, the dragonbone chains about Zero's wrist clinking against the bars of her cell as she slumped further forward.

"That's the day it found me. The flower." Zero's voice was neutral, for once derelict of both mockery and wrath. "Rose died, and Zero was born. How _else_ do you expect to revive a corpse?"

It was almost breathtaking, how wilfully Zero could miss the point, but the answer served its purpose. Rose had died, and so too had the rebels. They all lived now, thanks to the intervention of one thing. The beat of One's song in her ears was cacophonous, edged and dangerous.

“And the rebels?” she pressed, and this time, she was unable to keep the sharpness from her voice.

In the darkness, she saw Zero shift, the outline of the flower against her hair and skin soft, fragile. That such a small thing could be capable of such destruction still seemed impossible, unbelievable.

"Do you still doubt you and your sisters wear their faces?" Zero's laugh was short, her every word abrasive. "How much more obvious does it need to be before you believe it?"

One turned away, taking two steps away from the cell, needing _space_. Exhausted, it took far too much concentration to fight back the instinctual flare of anger at Zero’s words.

“The flower—brought you back.” One's throat was tight, but she eased the words out, her voice low and flat. “But we… The rebels. We wear their faces. What does that mean.”

It was a distinction that apparently mattered enough for Zero to bother making, and the long moment of silence from the cell was enough to confirm her suspicions.

Finally, she saw Zero's shoulder move—the suggestion of a lazy shrug.

"The rest of the Intoners didn't appear until months later—you know, when I made it very clear to the flower that I wasn't going to be its _tool_. You five... You're just the contingencies, because I was the one who said no."

The lie was a good one, Zero's words casual and derisive. Too much of it felt like the truth, honesty surrounding the deceit at its core, but the lie wasn’t what made One’s stomach churn.

“So we are… Spawns of the flower. And you’re some _hero_?” One's mouth twisted on the word, bitter. Zero wasn’t a hero. Zero had spent her entire life standing against everything One had hoped to accomplish, all the good she and her sisters brought. To hear the narrative suddenly flipped on its head…

A snap of teeth. “How convenient for you.”

"Don't get it twisted. I'm more of a monster than any of you, and I sure as hell didn't do it for some bullshit lofty goal. Or because it was 'the right thing to do'." Zero’s venom was practically a physical thing, matching One’s, but even so it almost felt as though the words weren’t meant for her at all. "Petty vengeance is more my style. The flower doesn't get to use me. _Nobody_ does."

Another mystery to add to the growing list, One thought, turning away and throwing the letter aside. Her head began to throb, frustration mounting until her song pounded painfully in her ears, until she felt weak from the force of it.

Looking around, she locked in on the chair against the back wall and pulled it over to the cell, trying not to simply fall into it. It smelled much like the rest of the dungeon and creaked like it would snap beneath her, but she didn’t trust herself not to stumble if she remained standing.

She leaned forward, fingers against her temples. "At least you are able to keep your pride."

"That's rich, coming from you."

"Spare me your judgement, Zero," One snapped back, still lacking the strength of will to look upon her. "I have only ever acted to stop you."

And now she was being told Zero had been right all along—that everything One had accomplished or built for the future had been for naught. She covered her eyes with her hands, curling in on herself in the chair.

They were timebombs then, ticking down until the moment the flower bloomed from them as well. And then what? What could be done except to die or let the world fall?

One looked up, her jaw setting. “Zero. You are seemingly the expert here. What can be done?”

"Kill the Intoners, and you kill the flower." Zero shook her head, her mouth twisting into a bitter smile. "Funny. Isn't that exactly what I was trying to do when you murdered my dragon and blew off my arm?"

One didn’t hesitate.

“There is another way. There _must_ be. I will not _kill_ my sisters—” She cut off, her lips thinning, and looked away. 

Zero had forced her hand. She hadn’t even deserved to be called sister, but now—now she was the hero, no matter what she claimed. Saving the world? One wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh. She knew Zero to be capable of many things—destruction and death and apathy—but she would have never imagined, never considered…

She tucked her hands into her lap and straightened in her seat. “I… Will need to know what you know. Everything.”

"You sad, sorry moron," Zero said, the sound of her voice frustrated and weary as she leaned against the bars of her cell again. Her song, chaotic and breathtaking in its every violent complexity reared up, gutted by dragonbone but threatening nonetheless. "I said there was no hope, and still you want to try?"

One just met her gaze, silent. Waiting. Refusing to even consider an alternative, to concede the point at all. On the topic of her sisters, she would _never_ simply give up. Nothing Zero could tell her would make her believe that the vibrance of Five's life should be extinguished, that the good Two was doing with her orphans should be lost, that Three's intelligence should be cut short, that Four could not be guided into becoming something great.

They deserved One's best, and she would not simply let them die. Not unless…

"Whatever," Zero finally said, and One listened to her push herself away from the bar's, waving her only hand. "I said I'd give you what you needed. I'm a woman of my word."

*

The first day One missed the meals brought to her by her retainers, she found them in a row on her desk when she ascended from the keep’s dungeon to retrieve an additional text from the library. On one of the plates, potatoes sat hardening next to a cut of ice cold veal, the spices and sauce turned to a sticky gel atop them both. There were two pieces of stale toast on another platter, and she took them with her to the dungeon, nibbling at them absently while she considered the flower and its weaknesses.

The second day, the servant who brought Zero’s meals carefully picked her way around the piles of books and finished her work with a small, reverent nod in One’s direction. A few minutes after she left, another entered with One’s food, begging her pardon for the delay.

That Zero, the primary enemy of the state and a prisoner, would receive hers before One, mistress of this land, must have chafed at the servants; thenceforth all her meals were brought a quarter turn before another came along with Zero’s. Though One rarely ate as soon as she was presented with the option, she did appreciate the foresight—and the time she’d save coming up from the keep’s dungeon instead.

But after three days of Zero’s complaints about the wait, she could stand the irritation no longer. One found it easier to hand off her plates and beckon the servant over when the other came; it took only one instance for them to start receiving their food together, the plates identical in every way.

Turric passed in and out often, but her reports were water between One’s fingers, slipping away at every turn of a page, the books building in stacks around her as she sifted through all the magic and knowledge available to man. She’d brought a small chair down with her when she’d first come, but one morning she awoke to find retainers moving a plush armchair into the dungeon, several more following with pillows and a grand table with intricate patterns carved into the wood.

One sent away all but the armchair, determined to save space, but she could not object to the team sent to sweep and clean the dungeon, each stone scrubbed thoroughly until it shined nearly as brightly as the walls of her library, the runes slithering along them with new clarity. Drapes of vibrant reds and pacifying yellows appeared to cover the spots on the walls and floor a brush could not cleanse, and even smooth incense was brought in hanging lamps to clear the age from the air.

If she hadn’t seen the transformation take place herself, One might have never imagined this had once been a dungeon. It more resembled a day room now, tomes and old scrolls scattered around, the only indication left being the bars—and Zero.

“Am I gonna get one of those?” Zero asked, her only good eye locked on where One’s chair had been pushed back into the corner of the room. “You never shut up about fairness, but shit like this still happens.”

One only considered Zero over the top of her book for a moment. She turned the page, her expression never changing. “I will consider it. Where were you when the flower first appeared to you? The Land of Seas, correct?”

“I swear to god, you've asked me that a dozen times already!" Zero snapped, bristling as ever at repeated questioning. Any sympathy One might have spared her vanished as she added with a sneer, “You’re wasting your time, you know?”

"As you seem so very fond of informing me." Despite herself, One's mouth tightened, and after a long moment of attempting to returning to her train of thought, she gave into the prickle of exasperation in her stomach. "What makes you so certain that... _murder_ is the only way?"

"Maybe because it _is_." Zero rolled her eye, her tone slow and irritable, as though she was explaining something simple to a child. "Look. We're sitting on our asses reading books, while fuck only knows what is happening out there! Our _dear_ sisters are loose on the world, and we don't have a clue what they're really up to."

One prickled but didn't waste her breath informing Zero, yet again, that the books remained their best option in defeating the flower without needless bloodshed.

"I have faith in them, Zero." One kept her voice level and mild, but her spite got the better of her as she added, "Tell me. Did you have such faith in _your_ source?"

It had been intended as no more than an offhand remark, born more of reflex than a true desire for an answer she'd given up on receiving. Whatever sneering retort Zero had been working on seemed to evaporate even as she'd opened her mouth, her gaze cutting away from One.

"Yeah," Zero said, her tone bleak. She shifted, sinking back further against the wall. "I guess I did."

One was no fool, despite what Zero might claim in her every other breath. It was laughably easy to connect the dots, link them with the regret in her voice.

"Michael," One breathed, into the quiet. She tipped her head back, the confirmation leaving her feeling hollow. A part of her had hoped she could corroborate Zero's information with the source, but... "Of course it was _Michael_."

She could hardly blame Zero for her faith, then. Were their positions reversed, One would have placed her trust in Gabriella's word just as entirely. She still would have, if only her friend had been there to give it. Would Gabriella have known of the flower, as Michael had? Would she have advised execution just the same?  
  
Unbidden, her only friend's warnings about the Gate, about Zero and letting justice be swift, swam to mind. Gabriella had been acting against something, that much was certain. With her rebirth as Gabriel, however, her reasons were just as lost to One as Michael's were.

"And why the hell not?" Zero asked, snapping One's chain of thought, always harsh, always unforgiving. "He'd been around for thousands of years. He knew exactly what we were facing."

One exhaled softly, pinching the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "And you believed him correct in his… theory?" She wouldn't concede that it was knowledge, _fact_. She couldn't.

She heard Zero's song shift at the question, the usual chaotic symphony growing quiet. " _He_ believed enough to die for it."

Even had she not been witness to the change in Zero's song, her deep anger and grief were apparent. One looked back down to her book, her eyes unfocused, unseeing.

"You know he was never meant as our target," she said, her voice low. There had been too much collateral damage to that fight, despite her victory. So many lives lost, all in exchange for the imprisonment of a single Intoner. She looked back to Zero, her lips thinning. "It was only ever you."

If One's words had an effect, Zero didn't allow any of it to show, merely offering her a careless shrug.

"He thought we could win, even at the very end." Zero reached out, her fingertips almost brushing the bandaged stub of her arm before retracting just as quickly. "The stupid bastard had always favoured brawn over brains, but..."

One said nothing, watching Zero. It was... odd, to find Zero capable of caring for anything but herself. Truly, One had not believed it possible, the selfishness and hatred as ingrained into her as her song.

After a moment, Zero continued, her voice audible to One alone. "I guess I can respect those who die for their ideals. Maybe."

When Zero said nothing further, One leaned back, thoughtful.

"I've admittedly wondered," she ventured as the silence continued, setting her open book aside on the nearest pile with a quiet thud.

"Wondered _what_ , One?" Zero asked, all caustic sweetness despite the wary narrowing of her eye, the uneasy set to her shoulders. The weakness in her disappeared, the waiver of her song flaring into the edges to which One was accustomed.

"Why you even care." One held her hands up, trying to cut off the defensive vitriol before it even left Zero's lips. "Don't play games. You were hardly a paragon of virtue before your death, and what reports I can find on you afterward suggest you changed little. Why even oppose the flower, when all you do is hate and all you care about is destruction?"

Zero's teeth bared, more a snarl than a smile. "You’re not gonna just tell me? That smug asshole look of yours says you think you've got an answer."

"The rebels."

Whatever traces of amusement there were in Zero's expression immediately vanished as she snapped, "And? What _about_ them?"

"You respect a martyr, by your own admission. You were kept in the same cellblock as the rebels, and you were all tried and executed on the same day." One lifted her chin, letting Zero's anger deflect off her. "Given how you _are_ , something... unusual must have inspired you to take a stand."

Zero leaned forward, all cool quiet despite the rage of her song, until she was right up against the bars. "Maybe I just refuse to let it _control me_."

"I don't doubt that's true." One watched Zero for a moment, meeting her one good eye without fear. "But there is a world of difference between refusing control and trying to save the world, don't you think?"

Zero spat off to the side, and it was impossible to miss the way her fist clenched in futile rage. "I think you need to mind your own _fucking business_. That's what I think!"

One smiled faintly, taking her book back in hand. It had been exactly what she'd thought Zero would say. Truly, in moments like this, Zero was so far removed from the being One had feared for so long. "You're getting predictable."

"And _you're_ getting unbearable," Zero retorted, turning her back on One then and stalking back to her corner. "You don't know a goddamn thing about me."

"Only because you choose it." One exhaled softly, looking down at the text once more.

*

Days passed, and then weeks. For the most part, the only thing which would not bring them to bickering was silence, Zero’s virulence as potent as One’s stubbornness. So while Zero seethed and complained and bared her teeth for the serving men and One alike, One whittled away at her research, working by the light of the tarrow candles brought down at the turn of each third hour.

Turric came every day no matter that her reports had long since grown thin, replaced instead with inquiries into One’s wants and needs, which were only ever for more books—and the status of the Mercurial Gate.  Zero tormented her endlessly when she came, but Turric showed no more gall than One, ignoring every vicious claim of brainwashing, that she was kept as no more than a pet or a curiosity.

Even those insults found their own inexplicable routine, until the only divergence was the letters tucked beneath Turric's arm.

Correspondence arrived almost daily in Cathedral City, updates from all of One’s sisters which grew to mountainous proportions on the tops of books. The first of them she lost to the clutter, her promises to open them in just a few moments slipping away when she returned to her work, telling herself she’d find them later. More and more came to replace them, but they remained unopened, untouched. Turric started a pile a breath from One’s chair, but she had to move it elsewhere when she needed a text from beneath them all on early methods of dispelling foul spirits.

By the third week, One had read through every book on old remedies for maladies: black blood, hysteria, possession by lingering remnants of the departed. By the fifth, she had cleaned out the library of all but the oldest tomes on magic and its birth. Towards the end of the eighth, she had moved onto those which could not even be read without a cipher and heavy translation, half of the words lost to the passage of time. Yet there was nothing about the flower, or how to rid the world of its influence without also destroying her sisters.

To make matters worse, Zero’s impatience had far outlived her helpfulness. While at first she had answered One’s questions bluntly, now she sneered and paced, alternating between snappish and seething as the time wore on without answers for either of them. Headaches often accompanied the late nights, One only half-cognizant of her own responses to Zero’s jeers.

By the time Five’s letter came, One left only to bathe, every surface of the dungeon buried beneath the mountains of books and scattered papers. Even the dragonbone blade had found its way into the dungeon, and One balanced it across her thighs when Turric entered and announced that Lady Five had sent word ahead of her arrival—and hoped One would find the time in her incredibly busy schedule to receive her.

“Five?” One asked, blinking at Turric as though she’d just spoken in the old, forgotten language of her books rather than the common tongue.

Turric nodded. "From the southern gate."

Understanding came a moment later, a thrill of delight running through her at the news—at least until she remembered the flower, her mission, and the danger surrounding them all.

“Damn her,” One cursed, pushing the dissertation on dragons from her lap and hesitating over the dragonbone blade. It still made her song waver, a sudden galewind upon placid waters, but she'd long since grown accustomed to it. She set it aside as well, mindful to keep it well away from Zero’s cell. How much time did she have?

"Fetch my horse," One began, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead for a moment, before adding, “And gather a party to welcome my sister to the city. I want her barred from the keep. We will treat her in the western overlook.”

“What? Scared you won’t be able to keep the flower from getting Five to knife me when you aren’t looking?” Zero grinned at her from behind her cell bars, the shackles of her dragonbone chains clinking. “Or maybe you're afraid for your own skin. Maybe it wants them to fuck you up, too."

“I don’t fear my sisters,” One said, running her fingers through her hair and visiting a small basin brought down after she’d begun inhabiting the dungeon. She splashed cold water on her face. “But Five is clever. I would not have her discover our research and put together the meaning behind it. I will not subject her to that.”

“Our?” Zero asked, her expression not quite a scowl. She shook her head then, impatience setting her song to a tempo even faster than usual. "Look. You think that _idiot_ is gonna be trouble? Fine. Get lost."

Despite the anxious anticipation word of Five's arrival had stirred in her, the tight thread of Zero's song was still enough to give One pause. It was true that since the flower had bloomed in her eye, Zero had scarcely found herself alone for much more than an hour at a time. Perhaps that... concerned her.

"You will be fine on your own for a time, flower or no." One faced the cell directly, trying to catch Zero's gaze despite her every misgiving. "I _must_ deal with Five—"

"Yeah. I hear fucking her is a great way to start, though rumour has it you know all that from experience." Zero's lip curled, and after a moment, she pushed herself away from the bars, turning her back on One. "I'm sick of being subjected to your face anyway."

One didn’t have time to deal with this—not now. With one last glance to Zero's back and only barely suppressing the urge to snap a parting retort, she hurried from the dungeon to meet her riding party.

She needed to focus, to push Zero from her mind if only for a time. Five did not do things of carelessness. No matter what her sister projected, the rampant hedonism and promiscuous dealings, one thing did not change: of her sisters, Five had the most drive, and when that was used in partnership with her innate intelligence, her ability to wheedle and command until her every desire was met...

If she was descending upon Cathedral City now, it was because One’s actions had made her suspicious enough to defy her commands, and that was more dangerous than Zero had ever proven herself.

A part of her wondered; if the flower spurred her interest, how much more deadly could Five become? One shook her head, disappointed at how her thoughts had betrayed her—Zero's influence, surely. Her sisters had not been touched by the flower. Not yet. There was still time to save them.

Still, for now she would need to keep Five occupied, Zero's vulgar commentary on their relationship aside.

A half dozen of the stable’s finest horses waited for One at the keep's grand entrance, and she mounted with just as many knights, all of them wearing fine ceremonial armor. One of them bore a banner: One’s black sigil inlaid with gold trimmings on a field of crimson.

She hardly thought there was a point to it, and would preferred it left behind, trading precious seconds for the chance to intercept Five’s party before they reached the keep. She quashed the urge. Appearances mattered now more than ever. If she could fool Five at first glance, that might be the end of it. With that in mind, she set her heels to her horse and led her entourage off at a gallop, thundering down the stone ramparts.

The message had said Five would be arriving from the south-west, probably crossing through Two’s domain. A trip through the Land of Sands meant her horses and men would be fatigued, and One was already making plans to pull them in with the promise of luxuries, rest, and great feasts to celebrate their unexpected arrival, no matter that such things would agitate her delicate senses.

If she was lucky, Five would swallow the hook as well as the bait, and the visit would pass uneventfully, her inquiries smoothed before they could fester into something deeper. One knew her sister better than any—despite the way her cleverness had sharpened in the two years since the Mercurial Gate, she ever remained prone to distraction in the face of new desires.

The curiosity which drove her unexpected visit could and would be subverted by One’s unfaltering attentions. As loathe as she was to suffer a week or two from her work in the keep, she could not help but let her mind stray to Five. While their last meeting had gone poorly by all standards, her sister was tall, sturdy, soft in all the right places, and One was abruptly aware of her aching back, her muscles twisted into knots from the long, tense nights spent with Zero.  A sudden desire for the smell of summer and wine washed over her like a long forgotten thirst.

It was only now that One realized she would not mind a few days entertaining her sister—perhaps it might even allow her to recover from the intensity of her work. She pressed her horse to a sprint, thundering over the battlements and leaving her party struggling to keep pace.

The south gate was a remnant of the ancient rulers of this place, just as many of the other constructions about Cathedral City. It rose as high as the wall and boasted a portcullis and set of heavy, iron doors both. Though the city around them had been laid to waste by battle, this had survived, and as One reined up before it, the guards snapped to attention, dipping their heads in a show of respect.

“Has my sister arrived?” One asked, and from one of the towers, a man gave a shout.

The soldiers before her floundered until finally a lean man with a commander’s helm slid down from the watch tower and presented himself to One with a dutiful nod. Up close, she recognized him as one of Turric’s men. Atar, if she recalled, his long face set with neutrality.

“My Lady,” he huffed, a little out of breath. “We’ve not yet seen the Lady Five. Do you intend to meet her here?”

“I believe I will,” One said, feeling almost dizzy with anticipation. How long had Zero been her only companion? Five’s visit may have been unexpected, the timing tenuous, but One could not deny she was giddy at the thought of her sister's arrival. It had been far too long. “Raise the portcullis and open the doors. I shall want to see her myself.”

“At once, my Lady.”

Atar gave a shout to open the doors and raise the iron bars, and within a handful of moments, ancient gears were cranking with the with grunts of men. The portcullis rose slowly, but when it had disappeared into the stone, the iron doors swung open in welcome. One looked out over the remnants of the once great city, her party of riders shifting atop their mounts around her.

She gripped the reins so tightly her bones ached, a part of her mind whispering, wondering if it had been the flower which had decimated the land so. She quickly rid herself of the thought. Five would see her concerns writ large, reading them in the slant of her frown, the lines at the corners of her mouth. She—she needed to stop thinking about the flower, the very nature of Intoners. Just for this visit.

Instead, she imagined her sister, travel-worn but still stunningly beautiful, her golden mane flipped over one shoulder, her smile contagious. Ever insatiable, she would want to feast first, One knew, and she sent for a runner to begin making preparations in the western overlook.

Then she waited, eyes turned out to the horizon, surrounded by her men, Atar standing crisply by her horse’s flank, prepared for any further instructions One might give. Minutes passed and then an hour, yet Five made no appearance. One’s mount whickered beneath her, tail swatting at a fly, but One sat perfectly still, her lips pressed with concern. The tension bled from her to the men and women around her, but she couldn’t help herself. Her song pounded in her ears, and Zero’s words came to her, pinpricks against the back of her neck: _Maybe it wants them to fuck you up too._

Her sisters—her sisters would not betray her she knew, yet… If the flower truly could influence them, could it also do them harm? She called for Atar to bring her the man who had originally passed along the message, intent to question him about the wording, the condition of the party when word had been sent. If Five was suffering, weak… If her visit had been prompted by necessity instead of suspicions… One’s stomach twisted.

He returned moments later, but he did not have the messenger with him. “Lady One.” He bowed. “Word from the Eastern Gate. Lady Five passed through there nearly a half hour ago. They were not aware there had been a message, and she claimed to have been answering your summons. They say she awaits you at the keep.”

One’s heart stuttered to a halt, her face twisted up in dreadful realization.

She set off without a word, driving her mount hard back to the keep, her song deafening in her ears.

Five had given her the gate she meant to enter through and a warning of her arrival when often, she did neither. _Played_! She had been _played_ by her own sister! The taste of it was bitter on her tongue, mingling with the fear that Five had done exactly what One had intended to protect her from.

She leapt from her mount, her steps against the stone rapid like the beat of her song, her thoughts and its notes blending together in cacophonous discord. There were no signs of Five’s party, yet One could tell her sister was within, the steady tempo of her presence humming through the stone. She was sprinting before she knew it, the doors to the keep flung open as she made for the servant’s wing, half blind.

One met Five at the landing of the stairs. She moved like a panther, shadows clinging to her like a cloak, stepping out of the passage leading to the servant’s wing—and the dungeon. Her face was dark, amber eyes gleaming in the torchlight, and One’s breath caught at the sight of her. A single look was all she needed to confirm, and suddenly her shoulders felt heavy. She froze, but Five noticed her anyway.

“ _Sister_.” Five’s expression brightened immediately, but One knew, she knew and it nearly broke her to see the effortless grace of such a hollow smile. “I had wondered when you might return.”

For her part, One could not speak. A dozen things bubbled at the back of her throat: accusations, excuses, and banishments alike. Yet none could amend this. Nothing she said might take back what secrets Five had learned in the cells with Zero—

_Zero_. One’s heart stuttered to a stop for the second time that day, and she immediately reached out for Zero’s song. She breathed relief when she felt her, alive and well.

“You look positively awful, One. Have you been sleeping?” Five advanced on One, and her strides were silk, all control. She brushed the tips of her fingers—warm, just as she had imagined—against One’s clammy skin. “The servants directed me to our dear sister’s cell when I asked after you. I could scarcely believe it.” Her thumb trailed at the corner of One’s mouth, and there was a flash of something dangerous and searching across Five’s features. “It looks as though you’ve made a home of the dungeon as well, sister. Pray tell _why_.”

Her face must have been an open book. Five studied her carefully, thoughts swirling behind her eyes, and One had to jerk her head away, breaking from her touch and gaze both.

“You sent word that you would come from the south, Five,” she said, attempting to wrest control back from her sister.

Five hummed, never taking her eyes off One. “A change of plans. The Land of Forests is so lovely this time of year. Have you seen it?”

“One might think you had meant to draw me from the keep by sending me to the wrong gate.”

“You rode to meet me? How unlike you. Usually you wait for me here, so I didn’t think my route would affect you.” Five tapped her chin. “Besides, what in the world would I gain from such subterfuge from my dearest sister?”

_A chance to uncover everything_ , One thought, yet she dared not voice it. Even if Five had been to see Zero, even if she had leafed through the many texts below, everything was hidden in obscurity. It was why it was so difficult to discover anything; unless Zero had come out and told her, there was no guarantee Five would even understand what they had been searching for.

_There is still a chance. She’s probing. She wants me to give it away._

“I can hardly claim to know your mind, Five.” One shrugged and turned from the keep, her heart hammering in her chest. “Come, a feast has been prepared for you and your party.”

She felt Five’s gaze upon her back as she began up the stairs. The dark crept in around her, chilling her, and it was like being in the sights of a true predator. Zero’s words ran through her once more. _Maybe it wants them to fuck you up too._

A breath later and Five fell in behind One, dipping her head. “As you say, sister.”

Silence fell unnaturally between them as they climbed and mounted One’s horse, Five’s arms around her waist, her chest pressing into her back. She had dreamed of this no more than an hour ago, but now she just felt empty, hopes dashed. Now her thoughts swirled, and her throat felt tight.

“I was surprised to find Zero still breathing,” Five said behind her.

One just made a noncommittal sound.

She didn’t think Five would allow her to escape with just that, but she said no more, simply leaning into One as they trotted away from the keep.

*

The western overlook boasted a dining hall so large it required near two dozen hearths to warm it. They crackled with life now, heat pouring from the flames in waves, and suffused the grey stone with a warm, orange light. Everything had been swept and dusted, the old woven rugs exchanged for ones of deep green and brown, the colors of lush forests. The dining table, long enough to seat one hundred, had been waxed and set with a multitude of dishes, simmering stews and cooked ducks basting in ginger sauces.

The scent of it all made it impossible not to balk upon entering the hall, but One steeled herself,  Five at her left shoulder, keeping her back straight, her eyes forward. She had known this would happen, but at the time she had hoped Five would… Swallowing, she looked to the men and women of her party, who’d fallen silent upon noticing them, the servers standing by all watching the sisters. There were no more than twenty retainers, yet they sat at the far end of the table, their plates empty and waiting.

“Please,” One said, her voice ringing through the hall, her heart in her throat, a steady pulse of pain beginning just behind her eyes. “Eat, friends. You are welcome guests of Cathedral City.”

A whoop of delighted thanks echoed from the far side of the room, and at once a dozen serving vassals opened casks and filled tankards while joyous gossip began anew from the weary party.

Dishes of honeyed sprouts and songbirds drizzled in sweet sauce were brought to where Five and One sat opposite the group, though spaces had clearly been left for them among the others. It was Five who bid her sit away from the rest, her purpose as clear as the smile she wore.

“I seem to have upset you, sister,” she said, pulling her chair closer to One’s as their cups were filled with a fine arbor wine. “Won’t you forgive me?”

One mirrored Five as she pulled a cooked bird onto her plate, its skin cooked to crackling golden brown, though she had no hunger. Five knew of her tastes, her delicate senses, yet she made no note of the show, the space between them as measured as the tilt of full, red lips. “There is nothing to forgive, Five. I was over-hasty. However, I should like to hear of your travels, if you would indulge me.”

Her sister gave her a pleased look, sampling the sauce as a drop at the end of her finger. She hummed at taste, skin flushed lightly in the warm glow of the fires, but One could not banish her fears; given such a lead, Five would not abandon her suspicions so easily. How much did she know? What did she suspect?

“A million breaths spent wanting,” Five told her, breaking the songbird’s chest open with her thumbs. “You have been ever so negligent in recent months. I would have thought defeating Zero would have made you more attentive, or at least more serene, yet here I find you neither.”

“There are many things which still require my attention,” One answered immediately, canting her head away as the heady scent of the bird drifted from its exposed breast. “And yours as well. How is your land faring?”

Five tore a piece from the fowl, bringing it to her lips with reverence. She chewed slowly, and licked her fingers afterwards, her amber eyes forge-hot as they slid across the table to One’s hands, trailing up her arms to the curve of her neck and the line of her frown. She licked her lips, savoring the taste, but her gaze was cutting, sharper than the knife One wielded. “I have written of it, though you only return my labors when you have need of an execution record—and when I am absent, no less. If only Dito had kept it, so that you might spare more time for your most devout sister.”

One’s thoughts flickered to the transcription of the execution, forcing her song not to spike in sudden panic. Her sister watched her like a panther, eyes gleaming in the flickering light of the hearths, waiting for a reaction, and One managed only to shrug. “The deposed rulers left many ghosts. Some merit a closer examination.”

“And? What did these ghosts reveal?”

Her voice gave nothing away. “Nothing of importance. I have since turned my attention to other matters.”

“Might you allow me to know these specters? Perhaps a new perspective is needed.”

“It is taken care of, Five. Thank you.”

Five blinked and turned away, her breath thick with fowl and wine, but One did not miss the flash of displeasure across her features. She hid it expertly with another taste of the vintage, but few things escaped One’s notice even as her head pounded, her chest tight.

After a swallow, Five said, “You need only ask, should you change your mind. My mind—as well as the rest of me—are ever yours, sister.”

One nodded, and Five’s attentions returned to the feast. She had yearned for Five just hours ago, but now it was bitter on her tongue, her stomach coiling.

Conversation continued on the other side of the table as the drink flowed, but the air between Five and One hung tense and uncomfortable. They filled it with cordial, clipped talk of their respective lands, though One found she had little knowledge of Cathedral City or its recent happenings, compensating by asking after Five’s most recent projects.

“A trifle.” Five waved a dismissive hand. “Provisions set aside for the impoverished. You were meant to be there, however. I know how much you enjoy such things.”

Guilt hit her like a blow, and from the shrug that followed, One was sure that had been the intention. She called a serving man to her side and requested in a low voice that her stack of unread letters be brought to their rooms, so she might read them once they had finished their meal. He nodded and disappeared, but there was no pleasure to Five’s smile, only a hollow echo.

Once Five had eaten her fill, the two of them excused themselves from the table, One telling those of her party that they were free to drink as long as they pleased and that accommodations had already been prepared for them. Then the sisters left them, and their walk was one of silence through corridors and up staircases until they arrived at their room.

It sat above the feast hall, its stones warmed by the hearths below and within. It had been filled with finely carved furniture and plush blankets, trinkets and books and candles littered on every surface. The gentle scent of lilacs drifted from the bathroom, steam curling from the archway, a welcome relief from the chaos of the hall. A bath must have been drawn for them, One decided, catching sight of her stack of letters beside a bed soft enough to drown in. Whatever comfort the room offered abandoned her as she ran her fingers over the envelopes, her gut twisting.

“Will you join me, sister?”

Five set a passing touch to One’s shoulder, but she couldn’t bear to meet her eyes with the proof of her loyalties clutched between her hands. How long had it been since she’d written to her sisters? Since she’d had time for anyone but Zero?

“Go ahead,” One managed. “I’ll wait for you.”

Silence filled the moment, but the subtle tightening of fingers on flesh was the only response Five truly gave. She spun on her heels, disappearing into the bathroom and closing the door between them. Even from here, she could hear the water lapping at the marble as her sister slid into the bath by herself.

With a shuddering breath, One melted into the side of the mattress, back bent over the stack of letters in her lap.

Her hands trembled as she cracked the seal on the first of the envelopes. She pulled the parchment from within and read the first line. _Dearest One_ , was written in Four’s jagged, artificial hand, One’s fingers ghosting over the rivets on the back of the page from where her sister had pressed too hard. She’d never had Two’s flowing script or One’s effortless skill, and no matter how carefully she spaced her letters, her lines were always slanted, her curves always sharp.

She read through the whole letter and then the next and the next until her face felt flushed with heat, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and all the while, Five’s song reverberated through her like a tremor.

Two wrote of her travels and her intentions to return to Cathedral City, Three of her need for more soldiers, Four of a possible rebellion brewing within the walls of her own fortress, and Five of her concerns. Faithfully, each of them wrote to her even when no replies came, unfailing, unfaltering, their belief in her steadfast.

And she had repaid them with silence.

One’s breath hitched, the sob choking in her throat, and Five’s visage came to her, eyes narrowed in suspicion, mouth twisted into resentment. Just what was she trading for the chance to save her sisters?

Steam curled at the edges of the room, a sudden dip in the mattress her only warning before hot arms slid around One. She jolted, dropping the letter onto the duvet, but there was no resisting the pull of those arms, the sudden spike in the room's temperature making her sweat. Lilacs clouded the air, but beneath that persisted a scent so familiar it made One’s head spin.

“Dear sister,” Five said, her voice a sigh at her ear, kind and lilting. One squirmed away from it, surprise and heat leaving her breathless, but the movement only made Five's hold tighten, her still damp cheek nuzzling into One's neck. “You’re worrying again.”

“Five,” One managed, unable to stop herself from flinching when red lips found her neck.

Her eyes slid shut, and reflexive, she tilted her head away from where Five’s lips ghosted over her pulse. Sex had never been a part of their relationship, but that didn’t mean the feel of that mouth against her flesh didn’t make her heart and song alike stutter, the duvet clutched between her fingers as a lifeline. The kisses never strayed beneath her collar, chaste and tongueless, yet wet strands of hair brushed against One’s skin and sent fingers of water trickling down her spine, a touch she could not ignore.

If One had ever held any interest in the body, it had been extinguished with the emergence of her senses, the line between bearable and excruciating razor thin. She protected herself with her gloves, her clothes, yet Five found the exposed flesh beneath her ear, the sensation wringing a whimper from One’s parched throat.

Relief and loss mixed in equal, riotous portions when Five withdrew from her neck, thighs bracketing her hips, arms offering no escape.

“Won’t you talk to me, sister? Have you truly no need of me? I honestly can’t decide whether your stubbornness is to blame for your silence or perhaps… Someone else entirely.”

A beat passed where Five lingered over the skin as if considering, but after a long moment in which One feared she might return, treading the boundary between pain and pleasure with enough reckless abandon to make her cross-eyed, Five settled on lowering her chin to One’s shoulder, humming thoughtlessly.

Mere moments had stolen all the air from One, the memory enough to make her itch, goosebumps prickling along her skin. She raised a hand to her neck, but Five caught it in her own before she could cover the flesh, bringing it to her mouth to kiss the heel of her palm. Thick lashes hid amber eyes, yet One didn’t know if there were answers to be found even in her sister’s gaze, fangs pearly white when her lips drew back in a half-smile.

“Surely Zero couldn’t meet your needs better than I, sister.” The embrace tightened, just shy of restrictive, and Five rubbed her chin along One’s shoulder, eyes flickering up.

“Five,” One choked out. “ _Enough_.”

"Forgive me, dearest sister." Five's hands fell away, freeing One at last, and she twisted away immediately, rounding on her sister only to be met with a flame-touched gaze. "It's been so long since I've spoken with you. That was too much, wasn't it?"

"I—Yes." At the mention of her silence, guilt collected in her lungs like a film, thick and black and choking, but before she could glance back to the letters stacked by the bed, Five leaned in, forehead just shy of One's own. "— _Five_."

"I know," she said, her song humming just beneath her skin. So close, One felt it as keenly as she felt her own, the relief it offered tantalizingly near. "I have missed you so much."

The sigils upon their foreheads met, skin to skin, and the rapid beats of Fives song slowed, waiting for One's to catch up. At once, the pressure behind her eyes began to dull, phantom pain across her neck dissipating as their songs began to align. One let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, some of the tension bleeding from between her shoulders, but she still took Five's face in both hands, holding her at bay.

Five’s lips grazed her own, so close, and a shiver ran through her. “A million breaths spent wanting…” Her hands covered One’s, light and loose and barely there, yet still they held enough sway to urge One’s hands away. “That wasn’t a lie, One. Not a day passed that I did not think of you, did not wonder…”

"Five..." She knew what Five meant to do, but her sister's name on her lips might have been a warning or an allowance. "I had never intended—”

Honeyed wine filled One's senses at the press of Five's mouth, lips achingly soft and leading. Hesitation bloomed at once, but Five did no more than linger, waiting for her to return the gentle kiss, leagues apart from the one laid upon One's bare skin. A hum of impatience filled the air between them, but it wasn't until long fingers found hers and intertwined that One accepted, her mouth opened, thin frown abandoned for a guarded exchange.

If Five noticed how she measured each brush of lips, there was no indication, her eyes closed, smiling faintly each time One chanced a look.

It had been so long since they'd last spoken, since One had felt her sister's song across her skin like a caress. Together now, the tenderness in each kiss warmed the affection in her breast, memories of their relationship unclouded by fear and uncertainty making her ache, her song changing to meet Five's, blending and melding until they beat together in harmony.

"I'm sorry," One murmured between kisses.

Five's fingers found the nape of her neck, drawing spiraling patterns that soothed, coaxed. "I worried for what I might have done to provoke such silence. Have I not served you faithfully? Have I ever left you desolate?"

"No, _never_ —"

"Then why? I did as you asked, even with Zero."

"It was never you, Five. There was—"

One's voice stuck in her throat, visions of Zero's flower dancing behind her lids. _The flower_ , it had always been the flower. She had only wanted to protect her sisters—all of them—from Zero, the flower.

"What, sister? Why do I find you miserable and making company of the dead? What has she _done to you_?"

One kissed the corner of red lips, an apology, but Five turned and caught her so that their mouths met once more. There was nothing from her senses, dulled to human levels, and when Five's tongue slipped between her lips, One replied in kind, the taste of her sweet, addictive. Her eyes closed, trusting and blind, and the hand at her neck slid into her hair, the one in her lap squeezing her own.

Head swimming, something bitter lurked within her sister's mouth, subtle beneath cloying saccharine.

"What is that flower, One? Why is Zero still breathing?"

When had their songs crested so, dizzying heights and the one-two pound in her ears? One's mimed Five's completely, the notes following half a second after her sister's, rushing to catch up, nearly eclipsed, swallowed whole by the hungry tempo that was Five's being, her nature.

"What are you _hiding_?"

The brush of an incisor revealed the venom within, a prick that settled fear deep in One's gut. She made to retreat, imagined copper filling her mouth. Five would need only to snap her teeth together, need only to fist her hand in hair rather than thread, holding One in place until her traitorous tongue loosened at the insistence of that song.

Before she could, One broke away, breathing hard, her head canted to the side. Amber eyes didn't leave her for a moment, watching, assessing, and again, Zero's words came to her:

_Maybe it wants them to fuck you up too._

"Nothing. There is nothing, Five."

She struggled to rein in her song, a cold sweat starting between her shoulder blades, but Five only repeated, "Nothing?"

She swallowed. "Nothing."

Five leaned back, the cooling air of the bedroom a stark contrast from her sister’s hot flesh. One was glad to let her go, still reeling from before, guilt and uncertainty settling in her stomach like a sickness. Yet the crinkle of paper drew her attention, looking up in time to see Five flip open the letter she’d been reading earlier, her eyes narrowed, mouth set unhappily.

“Then perhaps you’d rather talk about this.”

Five removed herself from One neatly, falling back upon her side of the bed with the letter held before her, propped up one arm so she could read in the flickering candlelight. It had been a letter from Two of her troubles in the Land of Sands, yet Five skimmed it briefly before tossing it aside. “I could save you the trouble of catching up if you’d like. _Someone_ had to keep an eye on our dear sisters while you were… unreachable.”

The look she gave One was frigid, all ice and knowing, all persecution. A trial waged, yet this time, Five sat in judgement, preparing to list One’s crimes.

“Two has run afoul of the remnants of the slaver’s rings in the Land of Sands—without children to exchange like coin, from where will their profits come? Half of them have started laying waste to her soldier’s outposts and the other half have targeted our dear sister—with little success, of course. Still, she’s required more men to keep the peace, and I’ve had to send her some of my own regiment to bolster her forces.

“Three has run out of men to experiment on, and the Land of Forests has been overrun by the creatures she’s created. I’ve told her to keep her little projects on a tight lead or kill them, and for now she is content to use animals as her newest subjects, though I doubt that will last. I thought you might want that as opposed to sending her new humans to open up and toy with.”

She paused, contemplative.

“Four… Oh, our dear sister Four. Without Zero to act as her boogeyman, she’s found a new threat to fight in your name. She chases shadows and roots out betrayal among her own people, and it’s up to me to ensure she doesn’t massacre her entire court in a fit of paranoia—unfounded, in case you were wondering. Her disciple is sure she’ll pull through and see sense, but I wonder how much blood will be shed before then.”

A sigh.

“Our sisters are _so_ troublesome. It’s been such a hassle to keep them in line for you.”

One set aside the letters, her back curved, her lips thinned in the vain attempt to keep them from trembling. Behind her, Five lay perfectly still, her song muted in anticipation. She was waiting for One to crack, to fall into her trap and sob the truth into the crook of her arm.

For a moment, it was all One wanted to do.

Her sister was driven; give her a trail, and she could chase it to its end. It could be the same with the flower, if only One would allow it.

Yet at the same time, the quiet notes of Five’s song ghosted across her skin like a caress. She was ravenous, insatiable. Her desires consumed her, controlled her. If the song twisted this way or that… Five would make a catastrophic puppet for the flower.

And then there was the bone deep ache which marked One’s days, the terrible, growing fear that there would be no cure for the flower or its seductive powers. The long nights spent with only Zero for company, the endless frustration when no conclusion was reached, the exhaustion when she pulled another book into her lap.

She needed to persist. She had to. They— _Five_ —would understand in the end.

One bound her song with the iron of her will. It betrayed nothing, flawless and unfaltering as she pulled her shoes off and blew out the candle at her bedside. Doing the same with the others, the only light that remained was that of the hearth, though that too would die out soon enough. One slid into bed, her back turned to her sister, and pulled the covers up to her neck.

“Thank you for watching over them when I could not,” she said, burying her face in the pillow.

Behind her, Five shifted, perhaps turning over. “There was a time when you trusted me with more than just that, One.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a while for various reasons, but most of them involved me (lionsenpai) being hella nitpicky about literally Everything. Finally we're both happy with this tho. Next chapter should be out sooner y'all. :')
> 
> In Zerrat's words: "I thought I'd die of old age before this chapter was ready."

When One awoke the following day, it was to a still room, the pulled drapes only permitting slivers of the midday sun to fall against the thick, woven rug by her side of the bed. A series of sharp knocks punctuated the sudden awareness, and shooting up in bed, One turned to find the space next to her empty, the sheets left askew.

_Five_. One let herself exhale, still half-expecting Five to return at any moment, slipping in from the bathroom to run her fingers through One’s hair, to quip about how worries hounded her even in dreams, a steady reassurance there was no way...

But Five’s side of the bed was cold, the familiar beat of her song absent. One’s fingers ghosted over the thin curve of her lips, her neck prickling with the remembered sensation of Five’s mouth.

It was only the repeated rap of knuckles against the door, insistent and demanding, that gave One the anchor to pull herself from her thoughts, and hoarsely, she called, “Enter.”

Turric pushed open the door, only hesitating at the threshold upon realizing One remained in bed. For a moment it looked as though she might excuse herself, apologizing, but at One’s beckoning, she gave a quick bow and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but your sister’s party is preparing to depart.”

“Five’s?” One asked, reading the confirmation in Turric’s expression. It seemed almost a dream—that the night prior had not been some concoction of a stressed mind… “She’s… Leaving? Now?”

“It appears so.”

Relief flooded One, only for it to immediately dye dark with shame, the two emotions warping in the pit of her stomach, spoiling. She should not have wished for her sister’s departure, yet… Just the thought of last night sent a creeping chill down her spine.

Five's sudden departure, when One had feared she'd pursue the unravelling thread until all was undone…Just what did it mean? Shaking her head, One forced aside her questions—at least for now.

“A moment, Turric,” One said, throwing off the duvet and swinging her legs over the bed.

Turric nodded and fell back into the hallway, the door clicking shut behind her while One found clean clothes to change into, distraction making her fumble with her leggings and boots.

Five’s mouth had been hot, her accusations ice cold, the dichotomy robbing One of sleep until the early hours of dawn. Worrying her lip between her teeth, she couldn't help but allow herself to wonder—had her closest sister truly not known her actions? Even the most charitable reading of them was damning. Five had always been smart, observant even when all others paid mind only to the flirtatious front… She’d noted One’s struggle with her senses when all others saw her as unflappable, the pinnacle of divinity. She'd been One's anchor through all, and now?

The thought made her clutch her stomach, a sickness roiling within, fed by the nagging suspicions she couldn’t dismiss no matter how she tried. If it wasn’t ignorance and hurt which bid her act, it could only be cruelty. One hadn’t thought her capable—not when it came to _them_. If that could change… If that _had_ changed…

It made her head swim, all the air leaving her in a ragged exhale. Her hand shot out to steady herself, leaning hard against one of the chest of drawers, and for one dizzying moment she was certain she'd fall.

Blinking, she tried to fight her way free of damning logic, of the only rationale she could give the night prior.

She wouldn’t believe it. She couldn’t. Five had never cared so little, not for her sisters. Not for _One_. Five's words from the night before returned, echoing through One's skull in a cacophony of noise, cutting, bruising, and ever judging.

It had to have been the pain of her absence, the perceived snubs. Five would not lash out just to watch her bleed. That was not Five, not the sister who had followed One faithfully to the end of her war and beyond.

“Turric,” One called, shaking. Her voice was thin from breathlessness. “How long until my sister departs?”

Through the door, Turric replied, “She is making final preparations as we speak.”

Right. There was scarcely time to dissect every move, every word exchanged with Five, to hunt for an answer when none seemed satisfactory. Her sister was leaving _now_ , and regardless of misgivings, her departure from Cathedral City could only be counted as a blessing.

The farther she was from the city and the bleak revelations within, the more energy and time One would have to devote to the flower—to saving them all. Five was a mystery she _had_ to leave for afterwards, no matter how she ached for forgiveness and warmth.

Pulling on her shawl and running her fingers through her hair, One asked, “Has she asked for me?”

When she opened the door and stepped into the hallway, Turric turned her way, clearing her throat. “No. She only began to mobilize her men this hour.”

Even with the vast difference in height between them, One’s quick strides forced Turric to a jog in a bid to keep up. Perhaps such a brisk pace lacked reserve and composure, but she was determined to speak with her sister once more before she left. If nothing else, One would see her off on good terms.

“And before that?” she asked, already skipping through platitudes best designed to mollify Five's pains, promises that their separation would be short lived.

They turned down a hallway and descended two flights of stairs. “She didn’t leave the overlook. I believe she attended breakfast and then sought the company of a number of the guard.”

As though last night had never happened… One blinked, still struggling to put aside the questions it raised.

By the time they reached the landing where Five’s party had stacked the supplies they’d need for their trip, One felt no better than she had the night before, the steady, unaffected thrum of Five's song humming in her blood. It was no effort to spot her sister amidst the buzz of activity—Five was as radiant as ever, her armor polished, red lips pulled into a half-smile as she spoke in quiet tones with a man One assumed was the party’s leader.

One made to meet her at once, but stopped halfway, her eyes drawn to the jagged edges of Five’s lance jutting from behind her shoulder.

Amber eyes flickered One's way, but Five didn’t hesitate to return to her conversation, laughing and pulling her weapon from her back with a flourish. Her soldier took it without a word, bowing and then moving to direct the throngs of people, the hilt clasped in two hands as he struggled to bear its weight.

It was only after he'd departed did Five finally move to meet her, strides slow. She tossed her long hair as she drew close, drawing a small mirror from the pouch at her hip.

“Sister,” Five drawled, examining the state of her makeup in lieu of actually looking at One. “Did we wake you? You slept so fitfully last night, I’d hoped you’d rest a bit longer.”

“I’ve slept enough,” One said, though Five seemed more concerned with the contours of her lipstick than her response.

“So you say,” she decided finally, smacking her lips and pocketing the mirror. “And as always, you lie terribly.”

“Five—” One started, taken aback by her sister’s accusation.

The only response she received was a shrug, followed by the cold touch of Five’s gauntlets along her cheek, drawing her to meet her eyes. Red lips were flattened with distaste, and Five swiped her thumb beneath One’s eye, the edge of her gauntlet threatening to gouge with just the right application of force.

Recoiling with the memory of Five’s mouth at her neck, One jerked her head away, retreating back a step, song ringing in her ears. Five didn’t move, looking for all the world as if she’d expected no less, but her hand remained suspended between them, a scorned offering.

There was none of yesterday’s warmth, only a bone-deep displeasure which radiated through every look, dark and threatening to bloom into something more at any second. Last night she’d been an inferno, scorching the earth and smothering One beneath her affections, but now was just the opposite—cool and languid, as though nothing remained— _could_ remain—of that warmth.

“I—Forgive me, Five. You are right, of course.” The sour notes of Five’s song grew more pervasive, and reaching, One tried to smooth away her mistake. “You know me best.”

Her sister’s expression was quicksilver, a flash of something angry overtaking her. Giving a show of teeth that was more contempt than kindness, Five said, “ _Of course_. ”

It was a rebuke, sharp and painful. Five turned her back on One, expression pinched in biting resentment, arms walled across her chest. Though One's words had been intended to reaffirm, it seemed they’d done anything but. Distress gathered hot in her throat, sank into the pit of her stomach.

What could she do? What had she _done_? Five offered her nothing, and, stomach contracting, One inched closer, unwilling to allow this to be how Five’s visit closed.

“If… If there is something— _anything_ —you require to ease your trip… You need only ask, sister.”

“ _My_ trip? _Dearest sister_ … You, who knows me _best_ , should understand I could hardly leave things as they are, when there is such need of me here. My men will be returning to the Land of Seas without me.”

One felt herself pale. “Without you?”

“It’s for the best, I think. However, I will ask after a favor, a trifle, really. I’ve instructed my men to leave my lance with your ironworkers. It was damaged on the way, and needs repairs.”

Her lance? No, more importantly, she meant to stay? Her parting would have left One with aches which lingered for days, maybe even weeks, but for her to stay? One’s thoughts flashed to Zero, to their work, the _flower_.

Gathering her voice, One managed, “Sister, are you sure that is wisest?”

Five’s gaze cut back to her, assessing. _Daring_. “I worry for my eldest sister.”

“Of course, but…” One’s lips tightened, trying to find the words to settle this, to send Five on her way and far from the flower. “You aren’t needed here, Five. All is well. Perhaps it would be better if you saw your men safely back to your land.”

Five’s mouth slanted into a frown, fingers drumming along her armored bicep. “So eager to be rid of me, sister? If you despise my company so, I’ll hardly inflict it upon you. You are _so busy_ , after all.”

As though she’d been struck, One winced. “You _know_ that’s not the case—”

“Then I shall stay,” Five interrupted, starting after a soldier as he carried the last of the supplies out to the waiting horses. Over her shoulder, she added, “And you will have the chance to _prove it_.”

Thick curls of hair swaying behind her, she followed the soldier out into the open sky, calling the man she’d been speaking to earlier over for a final word.

One watched, feeling wretched and useless all at once. She might have chased her sister, if only she knew what could be said to appease her, what supplications she could offer to see her smile. Now it seemed impossible, her affront too great. Was it the silence Five resented her for? Or the lies? Could One blame her if it was both?

Yet even combined, her crimes seemed withering justifications for Five's wrath. Was there something more? Some other sin One had committed?

Her thoughts circled, trying to recall her transgressions, but a light touch at her shoulder wrenched her from her daze.

“My lady?” Turric leaned close, her hand lingering a moment longer than One would have expected. She had nearly forgotten her, Five’s presence blinding her to the rest of the world. “Are you…?”

“Turric—yes.” One glanced at Five, but her sister had busied herself with her men. “If… If my sister intends to stay, we will need to be adequately prepared. Ensure the overlook is well stocked and the ironworkers know of Five’s needs. She will not stay forever... Only until I can convince her all is well.”

“I’ll have it done.” Turric bowed, but after a moment, she still had not gone. Her lips pressed to a line, and hesitantly, she asked, “ _Is_ all well, my lady?”

Looking at her, One saw that concern bunched her brow, and briefly, One wondered how long she had been waiting to ask. She could only hope she was not so transparent to Five, but she knew better, and her tone was defeated when she replied, “Yes, Turric. Thank you.”

Turric asked no more, turning to do as she’d been told. One watched her disappear around a corner, calling over two of the guard and speaking with them as she went. Alone, her gaze drifted back to Five, who stood with her back to One, her eyes on the riders as they mounted.

Watching the soldiers set out, it occurred to One that her transparency might not be wholly the issue, the memory of Five emerging from the servant’s wing sending chills down her spine. Five’s behavior lacked all sense as things were, but if Zero had said something… One could not help the subtle spike of her song at the thought.

She needed to know, needed to put all the pieces together to determine how to address the situation, but any inclination to visit Zero was left in tatters when Five turned over one shoulder, fixing One with a sharp, knowing look. At once, One reigned in her song, praying her expression revealed nothing of her mind.

It scarcely mattered. Five turned on her heel, strides toward her slow and languorous like a prowling cat. One could not visit the keep now, when Five watched her so, piercing through her pretences with nothing more than her eyes. She would have to devise another strategy…

As Five passed her by without so much as a word, One could not help but wonder if anything could fix this.

*

If One had expected her sister to press her for answers, she was sorely mistaken.

Though she felt her song faintly within the castle, One saw very little of Five, the telling vacillation of her song and threatening notes of discontent discouraging One from seeking her out directly. As far as she could tell, Five seemed more interested in her soldiers than One.

There were scarce few times when Five would appear—almost as if from thin air—and ask after someone she could not find, inspecting the state of her nails or smoothing her clothes, her words careful and slippery, but she never quite met One's gaze.

One did her best to be accommodating, but the briefs visits were seemingly random, the odd pattern keeping her from considering a visit to the keep to question Zero. Once, One sent Turric in her stead, but when the woman returned from her task, she’d only been able to tell One that Zero would not speak with her. Before One could figure out a way to respond to such gall, Five had appeared, almost as if summoned by the telltale spike of her song.

Whatever the cause, Five’s continued disregard curdled in One’s stomach, festering and warping until frustration all but bled from her, her pen still upon parchment no matter how she tried to finally return her sisters’ letters in the absence of any true work.

There was no banishing the constant wonder, the doubt. Five’s song thrilled at the edges of her perception, always there, _pervasive_ , and One worried for what it all meant, what truth Zero had let slip. Blundering as she was, it was impossible not to fear the worst—that Five might already know all.

Yet that raised more questions than ever: if Five knew of the flower and what One intended, to what ends did she craft such a ruse? Why play at ignorance and snubs?

For all that solitude had ever been One's ally, now it only made matters worse. For three days she paced and loomed over texts, the words blurring before her eyes, and with each one that passed, One’s fears doubled in on themselves, solidified in the absence of someone to reason with: something crucial had broken between her and Five.

Turric had tried. She'd encouraged One with hot meals directly from the kitchens and had the servants run baths daily for her, but her distracted mind could not be persuaded away from her worries. Every quiet moment—and there were far too many—invoked questions, made her turn over her every word to Five until she was gritting her teeth, gleaning motive from every flicker of eyes, every purse of lips.

Though Five was in and out throughout the day, she never disturbed One after the sun had fallen, and One woke each morning cold and alone in their shared room.

On the fourth morning, she didn’t bother to truly dress, mind racing with tangled thoughts as soon as she blinked back the morning light. Her head ached, but there was nothing to be done for it, so she rose all the same, weary as though she hadn’t slept at all.

On the way to breakfast, Turric offered her concerns about a disturbance within the ranks and the notable silence from Two’s regiment of soldiers, and One did her best to appear to be listening.

“—disobeying orders, often times turning up in forbidden areas and… Lady One?”

One barely stifled a yawn. “Forgive me, Turric. Perhaps after I’ve eaten…”

She had to say no more. Turric bowed and excused herself, promising not to bother One again until she’d learned more about both issues. Then she was gone, and One was left alone.

When she entered the great hall, however, One found her sister waiting for her.

Five looked up, platters of sausages and sweet pastries arranged in front of her seat like supplications. Most were untouched, left cooling under amber consideration, Five’s mouth twisted in pensive meditation. Shadows pooled beneath her eyes in the flickering light of the hearths, but whether it was the flame’s effect or the consequence of equally sleepless nights, One couldn’t tell.

Rising at the sight of her, Five smoothed away her expression with a half-hearted smile, her armor honing her curves into wicked angles, shoulders broad.

“Sister,” she said, lacking all intonation.

Dressed to meet no one, One touched her hair, suddenly vulnerable. Had she expected to meet Five, she would have grabbed her shawl, her vambraces—now she felt their absences keenly.

“Five,” she managed, squashing the urge to fidget before Five could notice. How did she usually greet her sister? Beneath Five's scrutiny, nothing seemed certain, nothing seemed adequate. Her heart pounded, unwilling to make a mistake, and finally, she settled on, “Good morning.”

“It’s nearly afternoon now,” Five corrected, sweeping across the room with long strides to meet One. Her expression was impenetrable, her tells well hidden, yet One had fumbled even the simplest of greetings. “I worried I might not see you at all today.”

“Forgive me.” It came immediately and without reserve, and One couldn't help but feel smaller in the face of Five’s idle criticisms. “Was there something you needed, sister?”

“So glad you asked.” Five’s lips quirked at the edges, the first smile she’d won in days. “I was hoping you’d accompany me around the city.”

The request blindsided One for a moment, and as she struggled to parse the motive behind it, she repeated, “Around the city?”

“That is what I said. You have nothing else to see to, I trust. I know your attentions are elsewhere, but....”

At her trailing words, One felt Five’s displeasure keenly, balanced on a knife’s edge—but so too did she see an opportunity to make amends. Doled out knowingly, surely. This was more than they’d spoken in the last three days, and it was the first time since the night of her arrival that Five had shown any interest in seeing her for more than a moment.

Refusing to allow the chance to pass, One said, “Of course I have time! Just allow me the chance to dress and eat.”

Five’s expression soured. “More waiting?”

One’s pulse quickened at the rebuke, and instead she tried, “Just my clothes, then.”

“Fine,” Five said, turning away. “I’ll await you outside.”

Watching her go would have wasted precious time, and One didn’t want to disappoint now when it seemed she'd been given a chance. If Five was willing to extend an olive branch, then One would gladly grasp it with both hands, desperate to appease her sister in whatever way would repair the delicate bond between them.

As One moved through the halls, she realized her sister might ask after the state of things in her land, and she struggled to recall the reports Turric had given, lost as they'd been in a sea of worries. She’d spoken about the ironworkers and their forges, One remembered, a dissatisfaction with the lack of reports from Two’s regiment, and little news on the missing soldiers from before her sisters’ banishments.

And trouble with the soldiers, which, now that One considered it, was almost unbelievable. They were her closest supporters, the army with which she’d deposed the warlords. They had followed her through war, famine… Even the earliest days of the rebellion she preferred not to remember.

Shaking her head, she decided against bringing any of those things up. One hoped she might instead bait her sister into talk of something more pleasant, books or games—anything to banish the apathy from Five's expression when she looked her way.

Upon reaching her room, One found a servant moving about with linen within, and she ordered mounts brought to the overlook’s doors immediately. He nodded and set the linen aside, hurrying from the room as she turned to find her vambraces and shawl.

The heavy wool around her shoulders was a comfort, fur rising around her neck to ward off the chill in the air, but it wasn’t until she slipped on her vambraces that she felt nearly whole. With luck, she might gain the rest of herself back with Five’s trust.

Her sister awaited her at the gates, inspecting mounts which looked freshly saddled. There was a carelessness to her which sharpened into scrutiny the moment One returned. Whatever her thoughts, she said nothing of them, instead stepping into the stirrup and seating herself atop her horse.

One followed suit, finding her voice as she asked, “Where should we start, sister?”

“The library first, I think. There are books I’d care to bring back with us.”

Stopping her tenuous smile from becoming a grimace took all of One’s control. Taking a breath, she said, “The keep... is still closed, Five. Perhaps something else—”

“Yes, of course. How silly of me to forget. You are _so_ protective of your pet projects.”

One kept her mouth a tight line, unsure of what to say that would not earn her Five’s ire or invite questions. Silence only gained her so much, Five tugging the reins of her mount and giving it a light kick, setting off while One hurried to follow.

“The dragonbone vault, then,” Five said, not looking back. “I have to admit I’m eager to know what you’ve made of so many bones.”

One set her horse to a trot to catch up, trying to ignore the prickle of worry which raised hairs at the back of her neck. The vault? For her sister to want to see the vault… “The bones have been untouched, Five. Surely there are other things to see while you are here.”

“Ah, yes. I’ve quite enjoyed the sights so far, sister. There has been a decided lack of the city, and your soldiers don’t smell as if they’ve just come from the docks. But the vault is something I’ve often wondered about. Won’t you indulge my curiosities?"

The look her sister passed over her was fleeting, a flicker of warmth across her expression making One’s pulse pound. She worried her lip between her teeth, but what could such a trip harm? At the risk of denying her sister yet again, One dipped her head and said, “Of course.”

Five didn’t smile, didn’t even seem to register One’s words. She merely turned back to the path before them, staring straight ahead as they crossed the plazas and wove through archways. The vault was in one of the lower baileys, and the narrow stairwells forced them to ride in a single line to squeeze through, One watching her sister’s back and struggling to find words which would break the weighty silence between them.

They came upon the vault before she could tempt her sister into conversation, and at once, she recognized Atar among the guards stationed by the doors. He turned to speak to his charges and then moved to meet the two of them, bowing low before their horses.

“Lady One, Lady Five,” he greeted, straightening. “Is there some business you have here? I hadn’t been told you’d come.”

Five shifted atop her mount, eyes trained on Atar. “You almost sound inconvenienced. Is there something more pressing you are meant to be doing?”

Atar looked up in surprise, but for all he realized his mistake, he didn’t seem to register the dangerous edge in Five’s tone. Worse, he licked his lips and opened his mouth, an answer prepared.

“No, Lady Five. I only—”

“Enough, Atar,” One cut in, saving the man from Five’s mercurious mood. “Open the vault.”

His mouth gaped for a moment, but then he set his jaw, eyes slits as he turned over his shoulder and repeated One’s order for the door guards.

Glancing to her sister, One could see no reaction, her eyes locked on the vault, and as soon as the grinding gears forced the doors to give, she set her heels to her horse and was off. One could do nothing but follow, trying not to catch the gaze of Atar or his soldiers as she passed.

The vault had existed unused before Zero’s assault, just one of many underground passages upon which Cathedral City had been built, and it stretched deep into the bedrock beneath their feet. The same runes covered the walls here as the keep, but they shone more brightly in the absence of sunlight or torches, casting the path in pallid green.

Their horses whickered and shied, stomping their feet at the insistence they proceed into the cavernous vault, but after a moment’s hesitation, One and Five passed through the great doors, their shadows stretching into the dark like nightmares.

“The bones are to the left,” One said, her voice echoing in a way that threatened to disorient.

Five didn’t respond, but she kept to the left side of the tunnel, turning off at the first offshoot, still close enough to the surface to see the golden light of the sun through the gap in the door behind them.

The passage ended abruptly, but not before the mountainous remains of Michael’s corpse rose to meet them. In the shifting light of the ruins, the white, jutting ribs looked like massive teeth, the skull stacked upon the like a watcher, eyes full of black. Even the horses dared not make a sound in the shadow of this once great beast, and unbidden, One’s thoughts turned to Zero, the way her song had changed when she spoke of Michael.

“A fine trophy,” Five murmured aloud, the sound bouncing around the room strangely.

She threw her leg over the side of her mount, sliding off and beginning towards the remains of the strongest dragon. Her fixation was palpable, and One hurried to intercept her.

“Sister,” One called, watching as Five’s hand hovered over the long finger-bone of a wing. The flame bright gleam in amber eyes alarmed her, the telling shift of notes of song driving her on. “Is there something specific you wished to see?”

Five touched the bone, and then withdrew her hand, removing her gauntlet and trying again with her bare hand. The touch was delicate, barely there, and One couldn’t help feel a pang of bitter jealousy.

As if sensing it, Five glanced over her shoulder at One, humming. “They appear to be all here. I dare say I could reconstruct Michael fully.”

“Only the bones used to make Zero’s chains have been moved.” One’s brow pinched. “Turric was very thorough with the collection—”

“Has Zero seen this? You must take her on walks around the city. I’m sure this is the first place she’d come.”

Was this Five’s olive branch? A trip to the dragon bone vault to discuss Zero—when so clearly it was _them_ they ought to be discussing? One felt the creeping chill of hopelessness, her voice tinged with bitterness when she replied, “That’s cruel, Five.”

Five laughed, short and clipped. “You think? Oh, but I forget—you _care_.”

“Zero stays in her cell,” One said, and she no longer had the strength nor the stomach to hold Five's gaze now. “You know that.”

“I stopped _knowing_ when you banished and all but forgot about your _dearest sisters_ ,” Five rebuked sharply, and on the edge of One's vision, she was terribly still despite the stalking, preying notes her song had drawn into.

Another accusation, though. What could One do, to bear the impossible weight of them all? Her hands wrung together across her stomach, teeth bared in a grimace, and she said, “If there’s nothing else you wish to see here…”

Over her shoulder, Five cooed, “Oh, of _course_ , sister. You are _so_ busy, after all.”

Before One could return to her mount, Five pulled the finger-bone toward her, turning with it held to her chest like a babe. Her teeth flashed white as the bone. “It’s just… I have to wonder after your reasoning for keeping such things.”

She stopped before One, her fingers tracing the grooves and nicks along the bone, the touch tender, almost loving.

Forcing herself to look aside from the play of Five’s fingers, One lifted her gaze to the razor curve of her smile, to her eyes—shards of amber in the dark. “What purpose could such a thing serve, Five?”

“It seems to me dragonbone is suited for only one task: putting corpses in the ground for good.”

“ _Corpses_?”

“Forgive me,” Five drawled. “I meant _Intoners_.”

One’s open mouth ratcheted shut, all the words stolen from her, her silence as damning as any lie she might create.

“It’s easy enough to puzzle out, and by the look on your face, you must have already known… Not that I didn’t suspect as much already. Did you know, One, that the Lady Caerula had her bookkeepers record events in triplicate? That record you sent for… Your last act before all but _disappearing_ … I couldn’t help but wonder just what it was you’d grown so fascinated with, enough so that you’d neglect your faithful sisters.

“And it was quite the revelation. _Dead_? And yet I feel so alive! Oh, but I know how you are, always worrying, vexing yourself over simple things. Remember the war? Those early days—”

“Five.”

“Yes, of course. You’ve never forgotten have you? I knew this would be the same, and I began to wonder… About Zero, Gabriel, _this vault_ … You have quite the collection of dangerous toys, sister, and all of them… Their only use is against Intoners. Why would you keep such things, I wondered? What were you _thinking_?”

Before her, Five presented the finger-bone as one might a weapon, hands flat beneath it. One was rooted to the spot, unable to move beneath the implications lurking in Five’s words, her eyes.  

“So my question is, One: _what_ do you want with these heretical things?”

She couldn’t bear to meet her eyes any longer, and so, wordlessly, One bowed her head, choking back a shuddering breath. Quietly, she asked, “Do you truly think me capable?”

The silence which fell between them raised hope into her chest, and One placed her hands beneath Five’s, refusing to touch the bone, to even entertain the notion… But Five withdrew, fingers curling around the bone as she clutched it close, her lips twisted into something pained and desperate.

“I only know what I’ve seen and heard, One, and what I’ve seen… What I’ve _heard_ …” Five’s voice dropped. “It scarcely matters to me how we came to be, only that we do continue— _forever_. I won’t let anyone threaten that, One. _Anyone_.”

She didn’t weep, though it occurred she should have. For a long time, nothing passed between them, the shadows growing thick and heavy around them.

“I see.” One barely recognized her own voice.

She should have said more, but what? Five’s suspicions grew deep, taking root to taint everything they had. One was sure even this much was only a glimpse. How could she know the depths to which Five suspected? How could she prove that it had all been for love?

Without preamble, One turned, stiff, and stepped into her horse’s stirrup.

“One?”

Without looking back, she said, “Atar will escort you back to the overlook. I have matters to settle elsewhere.”

There could be only one place to get her answers.

*

One didn’t push her horse, picking her way back up through the city’s many levels slowly, her gaze vacant, mouth tight. In the distance, she could feel Five’s song thrum with life, occasional flares of tempo. They were out of place, unusual against the backdrop of Cathedral City and yet even that was unable to shift the relentless circle of One’s thoughts. Her own song swelled even beneath the iron stranglehold of her will, and beneath her, the mare whickered, the tension locking up One’s joints bleeding down into the animal.

Blinking, One looked up to find she’d arrived at the keep, the ground thrumming with song.

_Zero._

Beneath the stones, Zero’s song leapt in response to One’s, radiating with an ire so pervasive, so bone-deep that One itched with it. The tempo pitched wildly, hungry, but One dismounted without haste, her horse shying as soon as it was free of her hold. Her thoughts churned, returning to the shadowed way Five had looked at her in the depths of the dragonbone vault.

Her sister now thought her capable of the worst, of forsaking bonds to become what she had fought so hard to destroy. Only Zero could be responsible for this change, this damning verdict on One's intentions. She was mercury incarnate, poisoning everything she touched, and One—One would not let her take Five from her.

Whatever Zero had done, whatever she had _said_ , One would have it from her.

Memories swirled at the back of her mind, humans shaking and growing thin with hunger, their minds distorted, the air acrid with corruption and smoke, but One pushed them back, steeling herself for what was to come. Those methods repulsed her now even as she marched on Zero’s cell intending to do what she’d sworn against. This was different—it had to be different. She had forsaken Zero once in the name of her sisters, and now, for Five and the faith she had lost, she would do it again.

Stepping into the dungeon, One wasted no time, the sputtering torches lighting her way. She only stopped when she stood before the cell, the bars between them a final, feeble barrier between them. She tucked her fists behind her back, watching as Zero rose at the strange discord of her song, looking her up and down with a sneer.

“Look who came pissing herself—”

“ _Be quiet, Zero_.” Her tone caught her by surprise, the vicious snap of teeth hardly hers at all. Every breath she drew was hot like ash, a conflagration which burned through her lungs with every inhale.

She hadn’t the slightest when fury had made its home in her, but now that she felt it boiling within, she grasped it tightly, refusing to let go.

Zero looked her up and down again, her scowl only growing. She bared her teeth in a snarl, no more than an animal, and something furious edged her song, fingers curling into a fist by her side. “Is that how you want to play it, One? You couldn’t get me to jump for your pet and now you’re coming down here to muzzle me yourself? You can fucking _try_ , you piece of shit. You don’t own me. You don’t _control_ me.”

The room quaked with their songs, One’s swelling to engulf Zero’s weakened one. The notes blended together until One’s head rang with them, and she stepped closer to the bars.

“I’m only going to ask you once,” One began, heedless of Zero’s words. Each word was slow, precise. It took as much to keep the song filtered from her voice. “What did you tell to make Five think I’ve become _you_?”

“ _Five_?” Zero spat. She straightened, advancing on the bars, towering over One no matter how the dragonbone stripped her of power. “ _Fuck Five_. You and your goddamn sisters—I don’t answer to _any of you_ —”

“You will answer me, or I will _make you_.”

Zero’s laughter rattled through the air, cut off when she surged forward, one good hand grasping One through the bars. Even without her other arm, Zero curled her fingers around One’s thin neck, nails like fangs at her throat.

“ _You,_ ” she snarled, right in One's face. “ _Do not control me!_ ”

Zero’s bones groaned when One seized her wrist, yanking her hard against the bars, the resounding crack of her skull against them stopping her vitriol before it could truly begin. The blow stunned her, of that much, One was certain, her forehead opened in a gash which bled, staining her pale complexion with red.

“ _Zero_.” One could feel the song raging in her throat, encouraged by the bruises blooming around her neck. It would only take a thought. She would only need to direct it to compel rather than destroy, and she would have her answers. She would have Five's faith once again. “What did you tell Five?”

To song compliance was a vile thing, used in the beginnings of the war to ensure captured soldiers would protect liberated lands faithfully while One’s armies marched on other lords. They had been desperate, and One had been unwilling to leave the innocent civilians of their conquest behind without defense. At the time, how could she have known what madness would sprout from such a small thing?

By the time word began to reach her, multiple holds had already been taken and left under the care of the songed soldiers, and when she did turn her armies around, there were only remnants left.

Those she’d compelled… They met her on the open fields with rictus smiles and sunken cheeks, ghoulish and grey as they reached out to touch her, singing praises to her name which tore their parched throats. They loved her deeply, obsessively, and in her absence—in her _song’s_ absence—they had forgotten their own humanity, shrines erected with bones in her honor.

The people they’d been charged to protect had fled as they changed, sinking into their armor until it became them, their swords and pikes more a part of them than their own arms and legs. Those who were caught were dragged back and filled the prisons of the holds, locked away in the name of protection, in the name of One.

By the time she arrived, there were few left, their bodies shrunken with famine, bones brittle and broken, but they still rushed to see her. Even the application of song could not save them. _Nothing_ could save them. One had watched them waste away, unable to stop their madness, unable to make them eat or drink. Her song soothed them, made them quiet, content, but it couldn’t reverse the trance.

She’d sent her sisters off to the other holds at once, and each passing day, word came back of similar conditions, of soldiers patrolling the walls until there was no strength left in them, their bodies left on the ramparts to rot by the others.

It had made her sick, the war put on hold for half a year as One tried to recover the losses, but no matter what she tried, nothing could be done to stop the deaths. Afterwards, she’d sworn herself and sisters to remembrance—and to abstinence. She wouldn’t tolerate any of them using such methods, and even when Zero had threatened the world with her flower, One hadn’t considered such a thing.

But _now_. Her grip on Zero’s arm threatened to snap her wrist, and Zero exhaled a hiss of pain.

Her song raged, eager to devour Zero. Would such a thing even work on an Intoner? One didn’t know, but she grit her teeth, telling herself over and over it had to be done. She had to know, had to mend things with Five, consequences be damned. She told herself the blank gaze would be worth it, the gradual degradation of her mind would be worth it. Even when Zero was so weak she could do nothing but whisper One’s name, it would be _worth it_.

“Answer me Zero.” She was cool fire, viciously calm. “What did you say to convince her I would truly try to kill them? How did you manage to ruin our—”

“I didn’t tell her _shit_!”

“You’re _lying_!”

“I told her to fuck off! She didn’t get jackshit from me!” Zero strained against the bars, trying to resist One’s strength. Drawing sharp, pained breaths, she turned a vicious glare on One, hatred palpable. “And you know what she did? She called me your fucking _pet_. She asked me if I needed your _permission_ to remove my muzzle! She wanted to know if I would attack at your command as well as keep your secrets! I didn’t do a goddamn thing, One! If that fucking moron doesn’t trust you, it’s not because of _me_!”

One stared, her mouth drawn with wrath, but even so, her grip grew lax, and before she could convince herself Zero’s word were false, she was wrenched into the bars, head cracking against iron. Zero repaid her for her cruelty in kind, trapping her arm between the bars  and pulling her close so she could feel her ragged exhales against her cheek, warm like the trickle of what must have been blood down the side of her face.

“You _bitch_ ,” she hissed, right in her ear, vicious.

Zero bent her arm back, threatening to repay her for more than just the pain of a cracked skull. One's shoulder strained, arm close to popping from its socket, and the relentless press of Zero’s dragonbone cuff into her flesh made her song quiver, limb losing strength.

“Months in this cage, months of _you_!” Zero bared her teeth and applied more force, One twisting her head away in pain. “And now _this_! You think I’m the cause of all your problems? That you’re a _god_ or something? I’m not a dog you get to kick when you wreck your own shit. I’m not some goddamn curiosity for you to prod at!”

“You—” One choked, and no matter Zero's genuine threats, her mind stuck on one thing and one thing only. “You didn’t say anything?”

“ _Shut up_ , One! I don’t care about whatever your precious fuck buddy thinks of you! I don’t care if you are—” Zero froze mid-sentence, but before One could seize upon the moment to wrench herself free, Zero pressed harder, demanding, “I’m done with the games. I’m done with you! Either you let me out of this cell or I kill you right here, you goddamn _upstart_!”

The song wailed in One's ears like an alarm, pulse flaring as sweat dotted her brow. She couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything, her shoulder feeling like it might give at any moment. Would her arm follow? Would Zero refuse to stop until she’d torn the limb away completely?

Yet through it all, one single thing continued to flash through her mind: Zero hadn’t betrayed her.

Snarling, One tried to readjust, gaining leeway, but Zero claimed it immediately, relentless.

“W _ell?_ ”

“Yes!”

“ _Yes?_ ”

“I will release you, Zero!”

For a moment, stillness shrouded them, both of them frozen in place. The dragonbone dug into her arm and the excruciating position made One’s head spin, but she couldn’t have missed Zero’s whisper even if Zero hadn’t been right at her ear.

“Swear it.”

Gasping, One said, “I do. I swear it, Zero. On my life and everything I’ve built.”

“And your sisters.”

“And my sisters!”

Release came as a sudden cooling wave, and before Zero could change her mind, One drew her arm back through the bars, cradling it close to her chest. Her song screamed, revitalized by the escape from the dragonbone, but One stood perfectly still, heart hammering.

“ _Now_ , One,” Zero demanded from the cell, her face hard and cut of angles.

Finally, her thoughts began to catch up, and she turned on Zero, not quite looking at her. “I can’t—”

Song rattled the dungeon, threatening to pull stones away. “You _liar_ —”

“Give me a day, Zero. Just one day. If I release you now, Five will—”

“I told you I don’t care about your shit with her!”

“She’ll try to kill you, Zero.” One swallowed. “Maybe both of us. Please, I swear I will release you. Just give me a day. I’ll make her leave, Zero. I swear it.”

Zero’s song spiked with loathing, but One only sunk to her knees, her arm throbbing.

She’d… She was going to song Zero into obeying even knowing what could happen. She was going to throw her away, convinced of her guilt already, but Zero… Zero had been innocent. If Zero hadn’t told Five anything, then it had been her all along. She’d bred suspicion and hostility in her most cherished of sisters, turning her against her on her own.

But she hadn’t even considered that possibility, and Zero had almost…

One felt sick.

From somewhere far off, One heard Zero say, “What the fuck is going on up there?”

One shuddered and shook her head. Her silences, her lies… She’d done everything for the sake of her sisters, and yet now—

“I’ll banish her.” Gods, what else could she do? Five had resisted her wholly, insinuated and accused until One was wrought with despair, until she was so desperate she would do anything to fix things. Even kill Zero. “Tomorrow, Zero. I’ll banish her tomorrow. And then you’ll be free.”

After a moment of silence, Zero said, “Don’t expect me to feel bad for you just because you look like shit.”

“I don’t,” One said. “But… Please. Just tonight, permit me a moment of peace.”

Zero didn’t respond immediately. One hung her head, and the sound of chains rattling barely phased her. Finally, she heard Zero move to the far wall of her cell, back scraping against the stone until she slid to the ground, her gaze heavy on One even in the feeble light of the dungeon.

“You better keep your word,” she said, and then silence swallowed them both.


	5. Chapter 5

She had not meant to sleep.

One jerked in her chair, legs kicking for balance, the black around her a void even her keen senses could not penetrate. When had she risen from the floor to crawl into her armchair? When had she finally faded from consciousness? There had been no dreams to mark her slumber, only darkness, so even when she righted herself, little divided reality from the empty abyss of her mind.

For a long moment, all she knew was a burning panic in her chest, sharp as though she’d not drawn breath in minutes, hours, and then - the creeping trill of song, jagged across her skin, the tempo like needles down her spine.

“About time." Chains rattled in the dark, and in the emptiness, One's gaze caught on the edge of a figure, indistinct against the keep’s shifting runes. “We got company.”

Between the darkness and the baleful, unrecognizable prick of that song, even those few words seemed foreign. One blinked, running her tongue over her teeth, her mouth full of cotton. “Zero?”

The fuzzy shape moved again, and this time, One caught a glint of metal, the delicate centerpiece of a flower, familiar all at once despite being cloaked in shadows.

If Zero had intended on answering her, if One had thought to press for more, everything fell away at the sound of a faint, far-off _click_. One paused, her breath catching in her throat, and the sound came again, once for every beat of her heart. The sound grew nearer with each repetition before it finally stopped, lingering like a threat just short of the dungeon’s entrance. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, One slid forward in her seat until the soles of her boots were firm upon the ground.

Before she could seize hold of her bearings, stymied by the dark and that malevolent ebb of song, the door the door to the dungeon swung open, groaning long and forlorn, the call of a warhorn warning of impending bloodshed.

Amber flashed in the darkness like the edge of a blade, and all sense of weariness fled One, her song spiking, fear turning her blood to ice. Instinct alone stilled her, bade her wait precious seconds for her superb sight to adjust to the dark. The effort was a wasted one—light filled the dungeon with a reverberating pop, fire chasing shadows from even the darkest corners, so bright One could do little but flinch away.

 _Five._ Regardless of what she'd promised Zero, this confrontation—here, _now_ —was not on the terms which One had wanted to engage.

And Five would have known it. Straining against the onslaught of harsh light, One knew she could not falter now, conceding to Five yet another minor victory in their ongoing war of attrition. Somehow, clawing tooth and nail every inch, One raised her gaze—first to heels, the jagged line of armor, to boundless golden hair and a face she loved so dearly.

Before her, Five's expression didn't so much as flicker with a hint of compassion as One struggled with her senses, impervious as the plate she now armored herself with, a paper charm held carelessly between her fingers. The end of it crackled with an unusual flame, and before One finally had to avert her gaze from it, she couldn't help but recognize the glyphs on the charm as those for fire, the smell of ink still fresh upon the paper as it burned—her own magicians?

“ _Dear sister_ .” Five's song came alive suddenly, its prior absence made even more striking now cast against the strange, dark symphony welling up as it met and meshed with One's and Zero's . “After all the progress we made with our little chat yesterday, I'm so _disappointed_ to find you here once again.”

There was danger in Five's tone, echoing bitter and twisted in the notes of her song, a warning knell One could not ignore. One leapt to her feet, but before she could find the words to soothe, steel flashed, Five drawing her bladed lance from over her shoulder, levelling it at One’s throat.

Five’s frown came as sudden and severe as a lightning strike, her voice tight. “Take a seat, sister.”

One swallowed, her thoughts stuttering over the true threat in Five’s tone and the gleam of light down the length of her lance. She didn’t sit, frozen in place, and Five's eyes narrowed, her lips drawing back into a snarl.

“Don’t make me - ”

Chains pulled taut with a metallic snap from within the cell, and Zero surged towards the bars. “What the hell are you playing at, Five?”

Zero was impatient, she was brash, and she seemed entirely allergic to planning ahead—and yet, relief still filled One as Five’s sharp gaze diverted toward Zero instead.

The distraction was momentary, Five's impossible focus not to be denied. She turned from Zero with the subtlest twitch of the lips, a small but telling sign of her displeasure as she shifted back to One.

One felt her mouth open, trying to find the words to disarm her sister, to challenge this nightmare reality. Words still failed her, leaving her tongue-tied and that growing feeling of panic in her chest, her hands trembling at her sides. That Five would bare steel at her… She’d known her sister no longer trusted her, but she’d _hoped_ …

Amber burned like wildfire in the vibrant light of the charm. “I won’t repeat myself, One.”

With no alternative left to her, One slowly lowered back into the chair. Her obedience was rewarded instantly, Five lifting her lance, tucking it by her shoulder instead—but never removing her hand from the crossguard. She turned, touching the paper charm to the end of a torch, before extinguishing it with a twist of her fingers.

Without the unnatural illumination of the magical flame, Five’s face sharpened into angles as she turned to scan the room.

Her gaze settled on something beside One, and she moved forward. One's breath froze in her throat, and she stilled as Five leaned over the chair, brushing so close she could feel the heat emanating from Five's skin, inhale nothing but wine and summer. Old comfort and new horror warred in One's chest, her hands fisting uselessly on her thighs. Before she could work up the gall to reach out to touch her now, Five was gone, Zero’s dragonbone blade held loosely at her side.

“You won’t be needing this. Now that we’re finally gathered together—”

One had nearly forgotten Zero's presence until the jerk and wrench of chains echoed loud in the cell, and she exhaled sharply as Zero snapped, “Hey! Hands off my goddamn sword or I'll shove it somewhere even _you_ won't enjoy/”

Irritation cut across Five’s features, more open than One had seen in months. “—I think it’s time we _talked_. This secret-keeping habit of yours has become somewhat bothersome—”

“You deaf or something? Drop it, you—”

Metal shorn, a terrible screech filling the dungeon. The arc of Five’s spear sparked as it cleaved through the bars of Zero’s cell, leaving gouges an inch deep. Zero paled within her cell, but rallied so quickly One wondered if she might have imagined it.

Growling, she demanded, “That all you got, Five?”

“The next time,” Five hummed, a dangerous line of tension wrought through her voice. “It won’t be the bars I cut.”

Zero’s harsh laughter rang out, her smile a jagged imitation. “You think I’m scared of _you_? Of something I could do in my goddamn sleep? You’re gonna need something a lot stronger than steel to put me in the ground, Five. I’d tear you to pieces before you ever figured it out.”

“Dragonbone? Yes, I know all about its _effectiveness_.” Five turned to face Zero fully, but for the briefest moment, her gaze flickered across to One. Approaching the bars, she continued, “My lance was ill-suited to the task when last we crossed blades, but it’s recently undergone some… Upgrades. The ironworkers of Cathedral City work fast, don’t you think? When I brought them the materials, they were only too happy to edge my lance with dragonbone.”

Her teeth flashed, white as the new edge of her spear in the crackling light of the torch. “I daresay I have _exactly_ what I need to put you in the ground now, Zero. Perhaps I’d save our dear sister the _heartache_ of doing it herself. You two have grown _ever_ _so close_ in recent months, but the last time I checked, you were still due an execution.”

“Just try me, you piece of of shit!” Zero raged forward. “If you’ve got the guts for it!”

“Oh, you'll find it has little to do with _me_ ,” Five murmured. Once again, her eyes fell upon One, and she turned half a pace, her free hand sweeping wide and inviting, a mockery of generosity . “What do you say, sister? You always were too kind, too willing to show mercy to those who would see our end. Tell me this—these secrets, even _Zero_ ... Is this merely your misguided mercy? Do you simply find yourself unable to execute one of your own? Tell me if you’re in need of a _heavier hand_ , and I will serve you faithfully now—as I always have.”

At once, One recognized the truth of Five's words. She need only nod, and Zero’s blood would run. Her sister would waste no time on the trivialities of a public execution. Here, in this dungeon, with no one to bear witness but One herself, Five would slay Zero.

And then she would turn upon the vault.

When One was stripped of her teeth and claws, when Five made her harmless, docile, only then would she be allowed to return to her breast, Five’s fingers in her hair, watchful for even a hint of straying, even as the world around them burned.

With Five's gaze pinning her own, the thrum of her song willing her to cede, abandon her values for the love of her sisters, to just _give in…_

It would be so easy, and for one long moment, One wavered.

“I’ve had enough of your shit, Five!" Zero's voice came like the crack of a whip, snapping One's reverie and the seductive hold of Five's song like thread. "Give me my sword, and I’ll show you an execution!”

What had One dared consider, no matter how fleeting her thoughts? Realisation lay heavy on her on her shoulders, damning truth forcing strength into her when she'd been sure such things had finally abandoned her.

“Five,” One said slowly, her voice perfectly even. “Where did you get the dragonbone?”

Five examined her at length, fingers playing along the shaft of her lance, for all the world as though she had to think about her answer. Finally, she allowed, “The vault, dear sister.”

One's jaw clenched. “And my ironworkers. I strictly forbade them from using dragonbone after they created Zero’s chains. What did you tell them to convince them to work with such material?”

Stark in the flickering light of the torch, Five’s expression flattened, her eyes watchful, unblinking. Without humor, she asked, “Can anyone truly say _no_ to an Intoner?”

One closed her eyes, reading the cold truth beyond snake oil words.

_Five..._

Drawing closer, Five tilted her chin, denying the silent rebuke as she instead continued,  “Such things matter little, I find, when your sisters are weighed against the life of a traitor. Well, One? What will it be?”

Even over the thunder of her heart in her ears, One could feel the quick trill laced through Zero's song, the freezing doubt lodging in her joints. Five was a font of song, swelling with it until it was nearly overpowering. Every note was so familiar, overlaying One's own until it seemed there was no separating their combined melodies.

One loved Five with all her heart, but when she opened her eyes again, Five was wrought of darkness and edges, body tense and taut like a bowstring. There was no softness to her, no love—and perhaps One no longer deserved such things.

The knowledge made One's task… easier.

“You will leave Cathedral City,” One finally said, firm no matter how her hands trembled. “Now _._ ”

Five only blinked. “Is that your choice?”

One rose to her feet at last. “ _Now_.”

Like an inferno, something vicious consumed Five, her face foreign to One, no matter how many times she’d traced those features with her fingers, her mouth. Stiffly, she said, “I see. But I will be rid of Zero before I go.”

Conflicting with the terrible calm of her tone, song exploded in the dungeon, and the bars of Zero’s cell groaned and bent inward beneath the power of Five’s will. The sound of Zero’s back impacting the wall was hard, no flesh on her to cushion her bones. Five advanced, moving in on Zero’s crumpled body, the dragonbone blade in one hand, her spear in the other, silent as an axeman, every inch of her carved into acute focus.

“Fuck—” Zero wheezed.

Five flipped the grip on her spear, prepared to drive it through Zero’s soft neck, but One was between them in an instant, catching her sister by the arm, strength straining against Five’s, her teeth grit.

“ _No_ ,” she forced out. “You won’t touch her. You will go!”

Combustible, volatile, Five’s demeanor shattered in an instant, her expression animalistic, furious. In her marrow, One knew fear, every cell within her screaming in unison, but still she held her dearest of sisters at bay.

“I will _not_! What spell has she used? What has she done to enthrall you?” The dragonbone blade arced through the air, but before it could reach Zero, One caught that arm as well, holding her sister back as a final bastion between Zero and death. Five snarled right in her face, vicious, seething, denied at every avenue. “Or am I seeing this from the wrong angle? You keep her under lock and key, play at being her master. Perhaps it’s not her hand which tug at the strings, but yours! And that flower—is death all we have to fear from you, One?”

The accusation was a knife to One's stomach. “You have nothing to fear from me!”

“ _Experiments_ , One? I jested then, but perhaps I sensed, somehow—”

At her feet, Zero clambered to her knees. “One! Quit playing around and—”

Notes of screeching song swallowed Zero's words in a dizzying swell, the cacophony of it ripping through One like a blade, her retort catching in her throat. She choked on it, her own song shuddering and twisting beneath the onslaught, nausea festering deep in her gut—but she held.

Unprepared and off-guard, Five hadn't fared so well, staggering back a step and then two, lance and blade both held slack at her sides.

Discordant notes screeched again through the keep, diamond-forged and blade sharp. Instinctively, One coiled song about herself, protective, but the foreign, jagged notes cut through the effortless symphony of her song with the precision of a meat clever, mangling it, leaving her gasping for air and swaying on the spot.

" _Shit!_ " One heard Zero choke out, breathless.

Before her, Five gaped as though strangled. She seemed to rally at the sound of Zero's voice, her gaze snapping to One's, her eyes burning with reignited fury—as though she truly believed One could be responsible.

" _What—Is—This_?" Five bit out, her song bleeding from her in wild, defensive waves.

Though she dared not look away, One’s mind flickered to Zero, on those delicate petals sprouting from her eye. It looked so deceptively harmless, but she recalled the way Zero had complained of its influence, the way it never let her rest. At times, when the torches burned low and the darkness closed in, One sometimes believed she could feel the seductive notes, crawling across her skin like a caress.

Even now, One could feel the familiar echo lingering deep in the chaotic song around them.

 _The flower._  

The flower's song was utter dissonance, more twists and sudden plummets than rhythm, each more cutting than the last, surging like waves in a storm. The stones above One’s head trembled from the force of it, but she was able to narrow in on the source— _outside the keep_.

“What have you done, One?” Five hissed, her pretty face contorted into rage. “ _Answer me_!”

One could only stare at her, breath caught in her throat, a million words on her tongue and all of them wanting. _The flower_ , One wanted to say, had always wanted to say. But what use would such information be to Five, without the wealth of context One had, the hours of research, the knowledge that her cause was just?

How could she explain, when its song screeched through her like nails down a chalkboard, fraying her every attempt at thought?

In the face of One’s silence, Five bared her teeth and bit out a curse. Lance in hand, she flashed toward the dungeon's entrance and up the stairs beyond.

 _Five._ Yawning terror opened up in the depths of One's stomach as she recalled the Mercurial Gate, the way her sisters had hung limp—dead—upon the black mass. _Not Five. Anyone but Five._

No matter her crimes, One had to follow her, _save her_ , but she was barely half a step gone when something harsh and desperate closed hard about her wrist. Jerking, One looked down to where Zero's fingers curled like claws, weak and fragile.

 _Five_ , her mind insisted, but the resigned expression on Zero's face stopped her short, left her rooted in place for just long enough.

"We're too late."

One's stomach clenched in on itself, and she looked down on Zero, half a twitch away from breaking free. "You can’t stop me, Zero, or she will—"

"Shut up! You know what's up there just as well as I do! You spent too long fucking around and now we've got no time left because _the flower_ —"

The chaotic song surged again, drowning out Zero's words once more, the force of it sending sweat prickling down One's spine.

"Just like the Mercurial Gate," One muttered, looking back to where Five had been, her mind still lingering on the foggy memories she had of that battle with the lords. Five had died and the flower had almost bloomed, and Zero—

One's gaze snapped back to Zero, her jaw setting.

 _Zero_. Zero had been the difference between victory and defeat then, though One had not known it at the time. Now, she was the one trump card left. A final chance to make things right. Zero seemed to read it in her expression, because in the space of a moment, the bleakness fled from her features.

"Yeah." Zero's teeth bared then, the savage grin of a predator. "Just like that. And if you want a shot at surviving this again, you know what you have to do. _Now_ , One."

One knew what she'd promised just the night prior—just as she knew how dangerous Zero would be, a wildcard One did not know how to control. But things had already unraveled with Five, and with the pervasive, merciless circle of that song above them…

What more did One have to lose?

“One,” Zero’s voice was low and serious, her grasp tightening about One's wrist. “Let. Me. _Out_.”

One exhaled, shuddering and low, and pulled away, her eyes locked on the dragonbone chains that bound Zero and her abilities both. Zero watched her for signs of faltering, ravenous and unblinking, her face fixed into unsettling focus. Those chains were all which held Zero, the culmination of everything One had sacrificed to protect her sisters, but they fell away with a burst of song like they were nothing at all.

There was a moment of silence after the shackle hit the ground, hanging limply from the looser loop around Zero’s hips, but One couldn’t find it in herself fill it. Without a word, she turned and sprinted from the dungeon. She took the stairs two at a time, heart in her throat and Zero forgotten behind her, her mind fixed on Five, Five, _Five_.

As she hit the final landing, another flux of warped song nearly sent her to her knees. She steadied herself on the stone wall, barely affording herself more than a fleeting press of her fingertips to her temples before forcing herself on.   
  
Five had thrown open the great keep doors, leaving them standing ajar in her wake, the morning light streaming inside for what had to be the first time in months.  
  
Beyond, the plaza extended toward the horizon, only to drop off suddenly. It had been there that Gabriel’s flames had robbed Zero of her arm, Michael of his life. The damages from that battle had ultimately been too great to repair, the tiles and pillars left gouged from where weapons kissed them in the heat of battle.  
  
One had been a fool to hope it would be the last battle this blighted city would ever see, the last tragedy that would stain the steps of her bastion. Looking out upon the plaza now, One's gaze finally fell on Five, the tumble of golden curls down her back. She was hunched slightly, her lance across her back, blade tucked by her side, her free hand set on the shoulders of someone of smaller stature.  
  
“Five - !” One began, but caution and the foreign song bid her show restraint, taking the steps from the keep at an angle. Tension screamed in her every muscle until she felt fit to tremble with it, but if it were truly the flower she faced, she would be ready for anything.  
  
Anything, but what she found.   
  
Two, splattered in carnage and reeking of death, the two blades clutched in each hand painted red. Two, her skin veined in pale blue, climbing along her legs like ivy, like faultlines buried in her flesh. Two, _who should not have been here_ , now, like _this_.

One's iron will failed her then, and all she could do was watch, mute, as Five snapped her fingers in front of Two. It didn't even draw a flicker of recognition, Two staring but not seeing, eye dull and unseeing. From the other socket, a flower had sprouted, blue petals seeming to quiver the moment One's gaze fell on it.   
  
Zero's flower flashed to mind, and One’s knees went weak.  She whispered Two’s name, her whole body trembling.   
  
At her voice, Five jerked, twisting away from Two as though burned. If One expected sympathy from her sister now, however, she was sorely mistaken. Five's eyes only reflected hot fury, and she was beside One in a rush of wind to seize her by the collar with fingers like claws.

“ _One_ ,” Five spat, the dragonbone blade menacing at her side. "First Zero, now _Two_ —”  
  
One flinched. “I didn’t—”  
  
“Enough of the lies!”  
  
“ _One_.”  
  
It was a ghost of a whisper, yet song was embedded in the sound, commanding total attention. Two advanced in a broken gait, swaying as she walked, limp from head to toe. There was no life to Two, no laughter, no love. What remained could be no more of a shell the flower had poured itself into, until her body nearly burst at the seams from the strength of the song inside her.  
  
One tore away from Five’s grasp, but the moment she turned on Two, her sister roared to life like a flame reignited, one minute gone and the next an inferno.

Instinct saved One where thought would have meant her end; preparing for Zero’s assault had taught her how to move, ingrained it in her body, and when Two exploded toward her, swords raised, One caught the blades on her vambraces, the edges sliding off with a terrible screech and a shower of sparks.   
  
By the time her mind caught up, she was already putting distance between them, heart lurching, adrenaline flooding her as Two gave chase. She had no weapon, no defence, nothing to catch the cuts except her vambraces, the reverberations of Two’s next strike rattling her joints as she turned it away, a terrible dread rising in her.

 _Dragonbone._ It glinted white in the sunlight. _How -_

With a pirouette, Two advanced, the the first of her slashes battering One’s guard, powerful enough to unbalance and allow the next to slip through. It came too short, missing the artery in One’s neck by nothing at all, and reflexively, One screamed.

The song should have blown Two away, should have sent her sprawling, but as if in response, the miasma of wretched notes around Two solidified, impenetrable.

Two launched after her with nary a moment wasted, and from somewhere far off, Five yelled “Two!”

Wide eyed, One careened into one of the broken pillars to avoid the next of Two's heavy blows. The stone gouged at her heels, the fragments flying across the ground as she scrambled back, desperate, fear hammering through her veins.

“Five!” she shrilled. “Sister - help me!”  
  
Once, Five would never have doubted, her faith absolute—even if it were the world itself that opposed her—but now she hesitated, rooted to the spot, her uncertainty more painful than the wicked edge of Two’s blades.

Here and now, that hesitation would mean One's death. An overhead blow sent shockwaves down to One's knees, her song flailing wildly, and she choked out another cry for Five as she darted away, Two relentless upon her.

"One!"

It came from two directions at once: Five, at the base of the keep’s steps—and Zero, sagging hard against the open doors behind her, breathless and gaunt, the final length of chain about her waist dropping to the ground with a clatter.

Five’s expression changed instantly, her eyes going wide, features clouding. One read calamity in the cold fury of her mouth, the sudden surety with which she gripped the dragonbone blade, but Two was there when One tried to dart forward, meeting her with a brutal pair of cuts. Bracing and barely holding against Two’s immeasurable strength, One looked past the gleam of bright blue song to where Five had turned, Zero straightening to match her stare.

They’d kill each other. A cackle rose in Two’s throat as she batted One away only to chase her down again, but no matter the danger, One's world narrowed down to Five. “Five! _Sister_!”

" _You_." Deaf to her plea, Five’s voice was a declaration of war.

Trying in vain to put a pillar between herself and Two, One gained but a second, watching as Zero spared a glance out over the plaza, her mouth tightening, before turning back to Five. She bared her teeth in a bloodthirsty grin, song enveloping her flesh.

"You want a piece of me, Five?" She bent to grab the chain from the ground, flinging the length of it for Five's face, only to be deflected before it could strike home. " _Come and get it!_ "

"No!" One shouted, breathless. "Five— _Zero_! You need to—!"

The very stone beneath One's feet quaked with Zero's song, unleashed and chaotic enough to rival what twisted monstrosity infused Two. A blunt force weapon, wielded without finesse or caution, and yet now... Feeling the flower's presence, after months of study and Zero's company, One could feel the likeness even with Two tenacious at her heels.

Zero sang, but it was not a song to augment, to build. It was a song for a single purpose—to destroy, to disrupt, to bring ruin. The peaks and plummets overlaid Five's with callous efficiency, butchering it, flaying the notes before they could gain traction.

Pain lanced through One's arm as Two’s blade slid off the end of her vambrace, catching just above the elbow, drawing hot blood to soak through wool. Song burst from One's lips automatically, her last and surest defence, but the notes tangled, turned aside by the rage surrounding Two.

No matter how she’d trained to face Zero, inattention would kill her here. Setting her jaw against the pain—real pain, not the phantom sensation of iron or steel—One stole back towards the keep, never daring to turn her back on Two.

Driven perhaps by One's evasion, perhaps by the taste of blood, Two laughed, her attacks coming faster, harder, each one capable of cleaving One into pieces, each impossible to parry, to turn against her.

The clash of song and dragonbone rang all around, Zero and Five tearing into each other with long withheld loathing, as hungry for blood as Two. From the corner of her eye, One caught glimpses of them, moments snatched amidst Two's assault, Zero escaping a slash by the skin of her teeth only to return with vicious applications of song, battering Five’s defenses.

“Two—!” The air before One’s nose parted to Two’s blade, a hair away from striking home. “ _Two_!”

Wreathed in song, Zero and Five flashed by Two’s back, Five leaping out of Zero’s reach, but instead of following her, Zero instead pivoted, springing for Two’s exposed back, keen and blood-starved.

Two caught her strike with the flat of her blade in a movement that was near inhuman, a puppet twisted too quickly, its joints straining to accommodate. Impassive, she uttered not a word—she exhaled sharply, rebuking even Zero’s incredible strength and merciless song, driving her back with the cross of her blades.

“Zero!” One called, balance shifting as she drove forward, her escape forgotten as she darted after them.

Before she could close the distance, a blur of movement at her flank forced her to veer. Fear gutting her, she threw up her arms to protect herself with the only defence she had left. But the strike never came.

Panting and unsteady, One found herself face to face with Five, dragonbone blade bared, the edge slick with blood from kissing Zero’s flesh. Amber stared back at her, expression shifting from something feral into abrupt upheaval, a stop made mid-sprint, momentum nearly too great.

But she did stop, and the world stopped with her, the two of them frozen. One huddled behind her vambraces, fight or flight, and Five hunched forward as though half-way through a thrust, her skin dimming with the power of her song until nothing could hide the horror twisting her face.

One could read it clearly, trace it in the identical grimace that she herself wore. She felt the question pounding through Five’s veins like a sickness: _how had they come to this_?

That question reverberated through the two of them, their songs waning into discord, desperate in their despair.

“One!”

The moment shattered like glass, their understanding falling to pieces with it as One jerked, moving just in time to avoid a blow which gouged the earth where she’d been standing. Two’s song dragged across One’s skin, and in her haste, One dove towards Five.

The blade shifted, Five’s eyes going wide in surprise, but instead of skewering One, she let her pass, putting herself between them with an expression that One could no longer parse. It couldn’t have been loyalty which made her catch Two’s next attack in One’s stead—One prayed it might have been love.

Spinning on her heel, she turned just in time to see Five’s sword batted aside by Two’s strength, one-handed grip incapable of stopping her. The dragonbone blade spun across the plaza, ripped from her grasp by an upward strike, and Five gave a guttural cry of pain. She dropped to one knee, clutching at her face and scrambling to escape the killing blow, blood seeping through her fingers.

She needn’t have tried.

Two was unstoppable, her eyes locked on One, and Five wasn't spared another glance as she passed her.

One darted back and away from the wide arc of Two's blade again, breath ragged. She couldn't hesitate, not for a moment, but the sight of Five cut down had been seared into her mind's eye, never to be banished. Five had put herself between One and the flower, and for her trouble, her blood now soaked the ground. It had been One's fault, all her fault—

It was a fatal flaw in her focus. As if sensing One's moment of weakness, the constant cycle of helpless self-recrimination, Two raged forward faster than she could track, the flower's song keening sharp as she brought down an overhead strike that would bisect One where she stood.

Desperate, the song burst from One's throat in a blind parry, and she drew on it, deeper than she'd ever dared, pitting it in a hopeless battle against the chaos of the flower's own song. Red light—song made manifest—condensed before her, an insurmountable barrier once designed for Zero and Zero alone.

Two's blade came down against it hard, the barrier just barely enough to absorb the impact, and beyond the clash of sword and song, Two gave One a wicked, knowing grin.

Two muscles corded, the edge her blade drawing sparks as she strained against One's defences. The red light washed her skin, her expression stark and savage and starving for One's blood, and relentless, she pressed her blades forward no matter how her arm trembled, how the fissures of song in her flesh began to pulse and spread in webwork cracks.

No matter how deeply One drew of her song, Two still advanced in slow, deliberate steps, an unfeeling puppet, pushing her sword and then her shoulder inside the barrier. One was powerless but to watch Two's flesh crackle and smoke, eaten away by One's song only to be mended just as fast by the flower.  

One's gut twisted, horrified, but no matter how she wanted to scream _,_ it was Two, _Two—_

Beyond Two's shoulder, warped and distorted by red and blue song, One saw Zero. She flashed by the dragonbone blade Five had taken for herself, her grasp curling about the hilt like the reunion of old friends, the familiarity sending a chill down One's spine.

A monster she'd feared for as long as she could remember, but now she could find it in herself to shy away. Zero was the wildcard she knew she needed, now more than ever, and in that moment, their eyes met.

 _"Zero!"_ One shouted, rallying against Two's strength, doubling down on her song. "Now! Take her now!"

With a roar and a burst of song, Zero closed the distance between them, her strike almost too fast to see. At once, the resistance against One’s barrier of song died, and Two dropped.

The world seemed to slow as One watched her fall, horror freezing her blood, and her song’s protection crashed to the ground with Two’s body. But Zero was already on her, her heel digging into Two’s wrist, pinning her arm.

Between them lay Two’s other arm, amputated just below the shoulder, the veins of blue light dimming, leaving gaping cracks in their wake.

Zero brought the tip of her blade to Two’s throat, preparing to open it in a jagged smile.

“ _No!_ ”

One leapt forward to stop her from delivering the final blow, but before she close the distance, a flash of gold barrelled into Zero, throwing her clear across the plaza.

Five didn't turn to One at first, her back bowed, her shoulders tense and hunched, wordless as she looked down over Two. Still devastated by the fury of her battle against Two and the brutal end Zero had wrought, useless words blurred in One's head.

Perhaps she'd somehow thought silence would serve her best, but when Five's gaze snapped back to One's, she knew how horribly mistaken she was. Hatred seemed carved into the lines of Five's features, stark against blood running red down one cheek, the deep cut slicing right through one eye. Her song keened and crested, soaring higher and higher until the notes screeched, and she drew her lance with a flourish, One’s blood turning to ice as the sunlight glinted along its length.

“ _You_ did this.” Five’s voice fluctuated with razor sharp melodies , all endless rage and wretched betrayal as she loomed over One. “You _traitor_!”

She pulled her lance back for an executioner’s strike, but before she could bring it down upon One’s neck, Zero was there, repaying her for her interruption with a hard shoulder into Five’s ribs, following with a slash Five nearly couldn’t dodge.

Zero gave pursuit, and they darted across the plaza, blows coming hard and fast, Five’s song bleeding from her skin with fury until she was cloaked with it, wisps rising from her flesh like smoke. Tremors of notes shook the air, the chaotic twist of them sinking deep into One’s marrow. The hair at the nape of her neck prickled in recognition, and her attention snapped back to Two.

Her sister lay where Zero had felled her, limp and motionless, song drained from her flesh. Two no longer rang with discord, no longer the desired puppet of the flower—

Broken notes screeched, palpable, and One shuddered at the same time that Zero screamed, “Come on, Five! I’m on a roll, and you know what they say about going big or going home!”

As life bled from Two, it seemed to fill Five, her strikes earth-shattering, forcing back Zero where before she’d struggled to match her. Two had been abandoned, the flower seeking a new tool to bring destruction. One crossed the distance between them, falling to her knees and clamping her hands over the bloody stump of Two's shoulder, fighting to keep her alive.

“Out of the way, Zero!”

Each clash was like a thunderclap, the air itself trembling, yet beyond where Two lay, Five’s gaze had never strayed from One, advancing only to be cut short by Zero, a constant presence forcing herself between them.

"You should know by now—I don't take orders from _you_!"

Whether it was some incomprehensible play at protection or simply Zero’s thirst for blood which compelled her hold Five off, each second she fought alone saw the danger she faced escalate. Five was relentless in her obsession—if they fought for much longer, Zero would find herself upon the end of Five’s lance.

Chancing a glance down, One watched as the flower in Two’s eye trembled, its petals wilting, disintegrating into nothing - letting out a shuddering exhale, Two’s eyes closed entirely. Feeling panic seize her completely, One squeezed harder, looking for anything to stop the bleeding and locking onto Two’s scarf.

A brutal clash of blades tore One's gaze toward the battle as she worked to fasten the scarf about Two's arm, Five lunging for Zero only to be turned aside by the flick of a blade and a pivot at the last moment. She twisted, righting herself, her eyes seeking One with unerring obsession—her back exposed and vulnerable to Zero's keen eye.

It was an opening borne of fury, a mistake where a misstep should have meant death, and Zero should have seen it. Zero _had_ to have seen it, and yet her first move was to to put herself between One and Five once more, stubborn no matter how Five's song battered her down.

 _Mercy_. The idea flashed through One’s mind, slippery but pervasive, water through her fingers but soaking every thought.

If Zero had shown mercy, then... One’s gaze fell upon Two, upon the cut dealt to a limb and not her neck. Gritting her teeth, One’s eyes flickered over the sword held loosely in Two’s hand, heart lurching at the thought of it in her own fingers.

She had to rise, had to stop Five, stop the insanity before she tore Zero to shreds, but…  

“Get the fuck up, One!” Zero called, as if sensing her weakness, her unwillingness to rise against Five with blade in hand. What good would come of advancing on Five with another weapon? Five would read into One's intentions, and like a cornered animal, she'd fight back even harder.

One's thoughts flickered back to when Zero appeared, her head jerking towards the keep.

“Is that all you—” Zero turned aside a slash—barely. Sweat shone on her brow, her good eye wide and wild as she dove back in for a counter. “ _GOT_?”

Five moved like a flame, sliding around Zero’s thrust, her skin adorned with light, bright and blinding as the sun. When she screamed, it came distorted, the force of it blowing Zero back, inhuman, chasing her down before she could even right herself, posed for a deadly thrust.

“Shit—!” Zero deflected the first, but her stance wouldn’t hold against another.

Before the second could sink into the tender flesh of her neck, One was there, a length of dragonbone between her desperate hands. She caught Five from behind by the throat, a shriek of surprise strangled half-formed, her sister’s flesh burning hot with song. Gasping for air, Five reached for the chain about her neck, head craning to catch sight of One.

Raising her lance, Five prepared a blind strike over her shoulder, but Zero caught the staff of her lance before she could, dragonbone blade abandoned to stop the thrust.

Trapped between them, Five writhed, flailing wildly, but One held the chain with all the strength she possessed, burying her face between Five’s shoulder blades. The light adorning Five’s flesh began to fade, her own twisted features emerging. Her song resisted, screaming notes nearly splitting One’s head with their force, her only defense the length of chain between them. Smothered, the notes grew less potent, struggling in vain, yet it seemed an infinity before Five began to topple, her knees going weak, thrashing limbs slowing.

All the song in her seemed to fade under the pressure of the chains, yet One didn’t stop even as Five fell back against her, body limp, hands falling away from her lance.

“Fuck,” Zero wheezed, snatching Five’s spear from the ground.

She looked to One then, her expression uncertain, flickering from Five to the length of chain still held about her throat. Only then did One’s trembling hands release it, Five’s body dropping to the ground, dead weight.

She wanted to call to Five, say her name just to hear it, yet the words wouldn't come. One’s taciturn tongue felt useless as she watched Five, praying for signs of life. Her sister didn’t move, didn’t groan or wheeze, hair curling around her back and shoulders.

Zero was frozen, yet she watched as One fell to her knees beside Five, turning her sister over, her heart clenching at the blood still running freely down her face. Frantic, she pushed the hair away from her sister’s chest, terror instilled at the ring of sallow bruises forming around her throat, and pressed an ear beneath her collarbone, listening for a heartbeat, for the sound of a breath drawn.

Silence.

And then the weak thump of her heart, chest rising slightly as she drew breath.

One felt herself shaking, her fingers fisting in her sister’s clothes, spotted with blood. Drawing back, she watched as Five inhaled once more, relief washing over her.

The feeling was short lived, shattered as a shadow stretched over where she held Five.

Towering above her, Zero resembled a vulture, lean and gaunt and terribly hungry, her good eye locked on Five. One’s eyes darted to the long shape of Five’s lance, the way it gleamed in the light of the sun. In Zero's hands, the glint of the weapon more potent a threat than any she'd uttered in the months she'd spent in Cathedral City, and now...

“Zero…” It might have been whispered as a prayer. “ _Please_.”

Zero’s lips thinned, her grip on the lance tightening, breath still coming hard from the fight.

“You’re going to get us all killed," she said, a harsh and bitter warning. She glanced down at the lance in her grasp, her gaze lingering on the dragonbone edge for a long moment—and then she tossed it across the plaza.

Turning away, she added, spiteful, “I’m not gonna help you clean up your mess next time, _One_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S POPPIN' OFF!!!! IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> in other news both zerrat and i decided to scrape the stuff we had for the story after this because we wanted to pursue a different, more interesting plotline. because of that, expect multiple perspectives from this point on!!! and also some goodies from a Could Have Been scenario!!!!!!!! ;)


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